Innovation Robotics will take place in June ahead of UK Robotics Week. We look forward to welcoming keynote speakers from Heriot-Watt University and the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics - Professor Ruth Aylett and Dr Thusha Rajendran.
Professor Ruth Aylett | Creating robots that care
Professor Aylett will discuss work in social robotics. This will cover how her work is focussing on producing robots that function well and help in human social environments - whether supporting the elderly to remain independent longer, helping children practice their homework, or acting as a robot team buddy in the office. The talk will highlight the importance of embodiment, expressive behaviour, and sensitivity and responsiveness to human emotions.
Dr Thusha Rajendran | Through the looking glass: what robots tell us about ourselves
Dr Rajendran will speak about what the science of human robot interaction tells us about the psychology of human interaction. He will discuss how human to robot interaction, forces us to think about people interacting with other people as ‘systems’, as opposed to in isolation. In abnormal psychology the ‘problem’ is usually seen with the individual rather than the system (i.e. someone with a mental illness, rather than someone in distress), which could be the interaction between two or more people (mother-child, employee-employer etc.). Art [in the form of Science fiction] has a long history of using robots as a mirror to own psychology, for example Data in Star Trek trying to understand human emotion, which essentially comes from the Pinocchio.