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Understanding Human Behavior for Robotic Assistance and Collaboration

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Jan 19

We are happy to present Henny Admoni, Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she leads the Human And Robot Partners (HARP) Lab. Dr Admoni studies how to develop intelligent robots that can assist and collaborate with humans on complex tasks like preparing a meal. She is most interested in how natural human communication, like where someone is looking, can reveal underlying human intentions and can be used to improve human-robot interactions. Dr Admoni’s research has been supported by the US National Science Foundation, the US Office of Naval Research, the Paralyzed Veterans of America Foundation, and the Sony Corporation. Her work has been featured by the media such as NPR’s Science FridayVoice of America News, and WESA radio.

Date and time: 19 January 2021, 3 pm – 4 pm
Speaker: Henny Admoni
Title: Understanding Human Behavior for Robotic Assistance and Collaboration
Zoom: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/67432682790?pwd=dVgzbjRSbUVFT2FOYTByYlZrTU9BUT09
Meeting ID: 674 3268 2790
Password: DF2020

Watch the recorded presentation:

Picture of Henny AdmoniAbstract: Human-robot collaboration has the potential to transform the way people work and live. To be effective at collaboration, robots must be able to understand their human partners, for example by recognizing their goals, predicting their next actions, and identifying when they need help. Much of the information about these internal metal states is revealed nonverbally, through eye gaze, gestures, and other behaviors that provide implicit signals. Therefore, robots must understand and respond to nonverbal human communication. This requires a multidisciplinary approach that involves robotics, psychology, machine learning, and computer vision. In this talk, I will describe my work on robots that collaborate with and assist humans on complex tasks, such as eating a meal. I will show how natural, intuitive human behaviors can reveal human mental states that robots must respond to. Throughout the talk, I will describe how techniques and knowledge from cognitive science help us develop robot algorithms that lead to more effective interactions between people and their robot partners.

Bio: Henny Admoni, Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she leads the Human And Robot Partners (HARP) Lab. Dr. Admoni studies how to develop intelligent robots that can assist and collaborate with humans on complex tasks like preparing a meal. She is most interested in how natural human communication, like where someone is looking, can reveal underlying human intentions and can be used to improve human-robot interactions. Dr. Admoni’s research has been supported by the US National Science Foundation, the US Office of Naval Research, the Paralyzed Veterans of America Foundation, and Sony Corporation. Her work has been featured by the media such as NPR’s Science FridayVoice of America News, and WESA radio.

Previously, Dr. Admoni was a postdoctoral fellow at CMU with Siddhartha Srinivasa in the Personal Robotics Lab. She completed her PhD in Computer Science at Yale University with Professor Brian Scassellati in the Social Robotics Lab. Her PhD dissertation was about modeling the complex dynamics of nonverbal behavior for socially assistive human-robot interaction. Dr. Admoni also holds an MS in Computer Science from Yale University, and a BA/MA joint degree in Computer Science from Wesleyan University.
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