A Workshop on Cognitive and Interactive Robots was organised by IIITH in conjunction with the popular RO-MAN Conference at Le Meridien, Windsor Place, New Delhi on 14 October.
Research in cognitive robotics is concerned with endowing robots with higher level cognitive functions that enable them to reason, act and have conceptual understanding of the world like humans. For example, such robots must be able to reason about goals, actions, when to perceive and what to look for while they autonomously explore their environment and determine which are the important features that need to be considered for making a decision. They should also understand the cognitive states of other agents required for collaborative task execution, do dialogue exchange with other agents if they do not understand instructions and can enhance itself quickly by learning new behaviour automatically from the observations of a dynamic environment. In short, cognitive robotics is concerned with integrating AI, perception, reasoning, human-robot interactions, continual learning, and action with a theoretical and implementation framework. Such frameworks will have a big role to play in Service Robotics, Enterprise Robotics and Industry 4.0 which aims to revolutionize current industrial automation through the use of technologies such as Cloud Computing, IOT, additive manufacturing, robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
The workshop brought together researchers involved in all aspects of the theory and implementation of cognitive robots. The participants discussed their current work and future directions.
Invited speakers were from top research institutions and companies around the globe who are leading figures in the topics covered by the workshop. This diverse selection of speakers was valuable for academic as well as industry researchers and practitioners.
Invited speakers
Prof. Dinesh Manocha, University of Maryland at College Park
Dr. Mohan Sridharan, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham
Dr. Rachid Alami, Director of Research, LAAS-CNRS, University of Toulouse, France
Organizers
Brojeshwar Bhowmick, Senior Scientist, TCS Research and Innovation, Kolkata; Madhava Krishna, Professor, IIIT Hyderabad; Mohan Sridharan, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham; Swagat Kumar, Researcher TCS Research; Balamuralidhar P, Principle ScientistTCS Research; Arpan Pal, Chief Scientist, TCS Research; Rajesh Sinha, Head of Research & Innovation Program – Smart machines, TCS Research; Balaraman Ravindran, Professor, IIT Madras; Arun Kumar Singh, Associate Professor, University of Tartu; Rachid Alami, Director of Research, LAAS-CNRS; Ilana Nisky, Senior Lecturer, Ben Gurion
Program committee members
Rachid Alami, Director of Research, LAAS-CNRS; Brojeshwar Bhowmick, Senior Scientist, TCS Research and Innovation, Kolkata; Vineet Gandhi, Assistant Professor, IIIT Hyderabad; Madhava Krishna, Professor, IIIT Hyderabad; Swagat Kumar, Researcher, TCS Research; Soumyadip Maity, Researcher, TCS Research; Balaraman Ravindran, Professor, IIT Madras; Chayan Sarkar, Scientist, TCS Research; Mohan Sridharan, Senior Lecturer University of Birmingham
More detail at https://robotics.iiit.ac.in/roman-workshop/
