Invited Speakers/Panels

Panel - Why my Cognitive Architecture is on the Road to Nirvana!
(July 16, 17:30-18:30)

  • Chad Jenkins - Brown University
  • Guy Hoffman - MIT
  • Stuart C. Shapiro - University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
  • Michael Thielscher - Dresden University of Technology

Invited speaker: Rachid Alami/LAAS
(July 16, 08:45-09:45)

Title: COGNIRON, The Cognitive Robot Companion

Abstract:

COGNIRON is a collaborative research funded by the European Commission in the framework of the "Beyond Robotics" workprogramme. Its overall objectives of are to study the perceptual, representational, reasoning and learning capabilities of embodied robots in human centred environments. The project develops methods and technologies for the construction of such cognitive robots able to evolve and grow their capacities in close interaction with humans in an open-ended fashion.

Expected results are basic methods, algorithms and architectures and their integration and long-term experimentation and scientific evaluation on embodied robotic systems in different settings and situations.

In the focus of this research endeavour is the development of a robot whose ultimate task is to serve humans as a companion in their daily life. The robot is not only considered as a ready-made device but as an artificial creature, which improves its capabilities in a continuous process of acquiring new knowledge and skills. Besides the necessary functions for sensing, moving and acting, such a robot will exhibit the cognitive capacities enabling it to focus its attention, to understand the spatial and dynamic structure of its environment and to interact with it, to exhibit a social behaviour and communicate with other agents and with humans at the appropriate level of abstraction according to context.


Short CV:

Rachid ALAMI is Senior Scientist at LAAS-CNRS. He received an engineer diploma in computer science in 1978 from ENSEEIHT, and a Ph.D in Robotics in 1983 from the University Paul Sabatier (Toulouse, France). He contributed and took important responsibilities in several national, European and international research and/or collaborative projects (EUREKA, ESPRIT, IST). His main research contributions fall in the fields of Robot Architectures, Task and motion planning, manipulation, multi-robot cooperation and more generally robot decisional autonomy. He has also a substantial experience in robotics system integration and transfer operations.