Kolloquium SoSe 16
Speaker
Dr. Robert Lowe - University of Gothenburg, Sweden
When: 2 May 2016 - 17:15
Where: D-125
Topic
Embodied Affective Decision Making in Robots
Abstract
The importance of the role of affect (e.g. drives, motivations, emotions) in decision making has been increasingly recognized by researchers in the fields of neuroscience and psychology in recent years. It has also been of contemporary interest to roboticists with a focus on issues concerning ‘embodiment’. In this talk, I will present work carried out over several projects that focuses on affective mechanisms used to guide decision making in robots. This talk will consist of two parts covering past and recent research in the area of embodied affective decision making in robots. In the first part, drawing from examples of my own, and my PhD students’ work, I will provide examples from evolutionary robotics and human-robot interaction as to how affective mechanisms can be exploited in robotics to produce adaptive behavior and decision making, i.e. that which is not the direct product of learning. In the second part, I will discuss recent work on tactile interaction between humans and robots. The ability to reliably convey and interpret emotional signals through touch (as a form of embodied affective interaction) provides an important source of information for appropriate social decision making. Recent results from a human-robot tactile interaction study will be presented that show how emotions can be expressed according to a number of different dimensions amenable to tactile sensing.
Vita
Dr. Robert Lowe is Assistant Professor (Docent) of Cognitive Science at the Interaction Lab at the University of Skövde, Sweden and also research leader of the newly formed ICE (Interaction, Cognition and Emotion) Lab at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Robert studied Psychology at the University of Reading, England and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire, England where he also did his PhD. He has worked on a number of European projects – FP6 ICEA: Integrating Cognition, Emotion and Autonomy; 2009-2013), Marie Curie ITN funded RobotDoC: Robotics for Development of Cognition, as co-PI (2010-2013), FP7 NeuralDynamics (2011-2015) contributing computational models of affective mechanisms for decision making and learning for use in robotic systems. He has served on the PC of, and chaired at, several international conferences and workshops, such as the forthcoming: Lorentz Centre Workshop on “Emotions as Feedback Signals” in Leiden 2016 and Alife 2016. He recently organized or co-organized workshops on emotion and robotics (IWINAC 2014, IROS 2015, AMSTA 2016) and is an editorial board member of Frontiers in Psychology and the International Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems (IJARS). Robert has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, conference or workshop proceedings. His main area of expertise is in developing neuropsychological models for use in socio-technological applications including evolutionary robotics and human-robot interaction and emotions theory and research.
Contact Person
Prof. Stefan Wermter – Knowledge Technology (WTM)