ShanghAI Lectures – Robohub

ShanghAI Lectures: Inman Harvey “Metaphorical homunculi: we don’t really have little men inside our heads”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 22:34:51 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-15

In this guest lecture, Inman Harvey from the University of Sussex, UK, talks about Representation and its issues.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence, run and organized by Rolf Pfeifer (from 2009 till 2012), Fabio Bonsignorio (since 2013), and me with partners around the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKPEN4wR9tc

The ShanghAI Lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: Kevin Warwick “AI with biological brains”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:45:18 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-15

In this guest lecture, Kevin Warwick from the University of Reading, UK, talks about a closed-loop interface between a biological network and a robot, multi-electrode arrays, and cyborgs.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence, run and organized by Rolf Pfeifer (from 2009 till 2012), Fabio Bonsignorio (since 2013), and me with partners around the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudYqj0EwbA

ShanghAI Lectures: Tamas Haidegger “Humans-robots-humans: Who is operating who?”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 08:44:18 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-08

In this guest lecture, Tamás Haidegger from Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary, talks about Computer-Integrated Surgery, gives a market overview of surgical robots, and discusses some of the trends in this field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xWDGaM30V4

Slides

ShanghAI Lectures: Rüdiger Dillmann “Programming by Demonstration”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 18:09:02 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-15

In this guest lecture, Rüdiger Dillmann from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, talks about paradigms for robot learning and the properties of learning by demonstration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGe6IrDzc_o

ShanghAI Lectures: Weidong Chen “Enhancing Autonomy and Safety of Assistive Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:30:10 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-15

In this guest lecture, Weidong Chen from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, talks about the design of assistive robots, especially a robotic wheelchair, and outlines challenges and approaches.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence, run and organized by Rolf Pfeifer (from 2009 till 2012), Fabio Bonsignorio (since 2013), and me with partners around the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93ejym07ak

Weidong Chen received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Control Engineering in 1990 and 1993, and Ph.D. degree in Mechatronics in 1996, respectively, all from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. Since 2005 he has been a professor of the Department of Automation at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, and director of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Processing. From 2003 to 2004, he was a visiting associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University. Dr. Chen’s research interests include autonomous mobile robot, multi-robot cooperation, and micro manipulation.

ShanghAI Lectures: Barbara Webb “AI – Artificial Insects”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:53:34 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-08

In this guest lecture, Barbara Webb from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, talks about using robots to model biology, human and insect brains, and cricket-robot experiments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjoWbbh7m0M

ShanghAI Lectures: Dustin Li “Embodied Development for an Autonomous Delivery Robot”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 13:19:27 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-12-01

In this guest lecture, Dustin Li from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian, China, talks about the design of a robot that autonomously delivers items in an office building.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoM6KBobB5k

Xiaoan (Dustin) Li received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Information Engineering in 1987, Control Theory and Application in 1990, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Application Technology in 2000, respectively, all from the department of computer, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an city, China. Since 1997 he has been an associate professor. From May 2008 to May 2009, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Michigan State University. Dr. Li is the founder of the Soccer Robot team in Northwestern Polytechnical University, and the chief advisor from 2003 to 2009. His research interests include computational intelligence, learning and cooperation of multi-agent robot system, the real-time intelligent control.

Slides

ShanghAI Lectures: Thierry Bücheler “Latest Insights on Human Collective Intelligence”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 19:31:56 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-24

In this guest lecture, Thierry Bücheler from the AI Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland, talks about collective intelligence, quality and critical mass, and gives examples of where collective intelligence can be useful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGZxL5aREQQ

ShanghAI Lectures: Fumiya Iida “Soft robotics approach toward artificial ontogenetic development”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:05:26 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-17

Artificial ontogenetic development has been nicely demonstrated by many computer simulation studies in the past. There are, however, still a number of technical challenges in bringing it to the real world. In this presentation, I will introduce some potential solutions to this challenging problem, solutions that stem from soft robotics research. More specifically, we demonstrate how autonomous construction, autonomous body extension, and autonomous robot climbing locomotion can be achieved by exploiting unconventional soft material such as Hot Melt Adhesives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3wxfJ0gKg

Slides

ShanghAI Lectures: Josh Bongard “Morphological Change in Machines Accelerates the Evolution of Robust Behavior”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 14:42:38 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-17

In this guest lecture, Josh Bongard from the University of Vermont (USA) and co-author of How the body shapes the way we think (MIT Press), talks about bio-inspired robotics and how engineering may benefit from evolutionary robotics and morphological scaffolding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mykg2KpT87A

Slides

ShanghAI Lectures: Koh Hosoda “Musculoskeletal Humanoids”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 19:07:30 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-10

In this guest lecture, Koh Hosoda from Osaka University, Japan, talks about human and humanoid intelligence, movement, and bouncing, and introduces the musculoskeletal infant robot Pneuborn-7II.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIbBMGa-hAs

Koh Hosoda received the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Kyoto University, Japan in 1993. From 1993 to 1997, he was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering for Computer-Controlled Machinery, Osaka University. From 1997 to 2010 he was an Associate Professor of the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University. From 2005 to 2010, he was a group leader of the JST Asada ERATO Project, as well. From Apr 2010, he has been a Professor of the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University.
He stayed at the AI laboratory, Zurich as a guest professor through Apr 1998 to Mar 1999.

ShanghAI Lectures: Barry Richards and Craig Turnbull “Robotics and Automation Applied to the Aircraft Industry”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:01:34 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-10

In this guest lecture, Craig Turnbull and Barry Richards from Electroimpact talk about robots in aircraft manufacturing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8QqDdhiQ18

ShanghAI Lectures: Olivier Michel “Webots: Fast prototyping and simulation of mobile robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 21:08:24 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-10

This presentation introduces Cyberbotics Ltd. with a little bit of history (where it came from), then it presents the Webots software that allows researchers and students to develop fast prototypes and simulations of mobile robots. Webots is being used in over than 875 universities and research centers world wide for both research and education. The end of the presentation includes a live demo of the new upcoming features in Webots: display of collision detection, interactive application of forces and torques to objects while the simulation is running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWsd4Fhh0gQ

Olivier Michel is the founder and CEO of Cyberbotics Ltd. This company develops the Webots software used in the ShanghAI lectures. Webots is a fast prototyping and simulation software for mobile robots. More information about it can be found here: http://www.cyberbotics.com.

ShanghAI Lectures: Fabio Bonsignorio “Embodied Finance: Embodying Disruptive Innovation in Embodied Cognitive Systems”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:48:50 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-03

In this guest lecture, Fabio Bonsignorio from University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, talks about issues with innovation and robotic startup companies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GUcpvPSSxU

Fabio Bonsignorio is founder and CEO of Heron Robots, a company active in the development of advanced robotics solutions. From September 2009 he is a professor at the University Carlos III of Madrid (www.uc3m.es, roboticslab.uc3m.es) as Santander Chair of Excellence in Robotics. He has been working in the R&D departments of several major Italian and American companies, mainly in the applications of intelligent systems and technology transfer with cordination/management responsibilities for some 20 years. He held academic research positions on robotics and lectured in robotics, industrial control systems and machine design at the Department of Mechanics of the University of Genova. He is author or co-author of about 40 publications in the areas of robotics, cognition and manufacturing systems in the last three years, since he became an almost full time researcher. His first paper on robot control dates back to 1985.

He is puzzled by foundational and epistemological issues in (embodied) cognition and robotics, while chasing viable real world applications. He is a member of IEEE/RAS, AAAI, CLAWAR, and euCognition. He coordinates the EURON Special Interest Group on Good Experimental Methodology and Benchmarking in Robotics and is a board member of EURON III.

ShanghAI Lectures: Claude Patrick Siegenthaler “In Search of Embodied Intelligence in Markets”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:06:44 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-03

In this guest lecture, Claude Patrick Siegenthaler from Switzerland gives a brief introduction to economics and markets and relates them to intelligent agents.

Please note that due to technical problems, the slides are not displayed during the first few minutes of the recording – we apologize for the glitch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOTSPvngvr0

Slides

ShanghAI Lectures: Toshiyuki Nakagaki “How does an amoeba tackle a maze?”

Nathan Labhart — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 13:55:33 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-10-27

In this guest lecture, Toshiyuki Nakagaki from Future University Hakodate, Japan, talks about his experiments with true slime mold and its abilities to find the shortest path to a food source.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxWum21k6dU

ShanghAI Lectures: Minoru Asada “Cognitive Developmental Robotics”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 22 May 2014 15:06:23 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-10-20

In this guest lecture, Minoru Asada from Osaka University, Japan, talks about combining developmental psychology, neuroscience, and robotics into “Cognitive Developmental Robotics”, a new paradigm that provides an understanding of ourselves and at the same time serves as a design theory of humanoid symbiosis with us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWzqJrvHRow

30 years of AI with Rolf Pfeifer: A robotics legend delivers his farewell talk

Nathan Labhart — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:41:43 +0000

Source: University of Zurich Mediadesk

Watch Rolf Pfeifer’s farewell lecture at the University of Zurich, broadcasting live on Robohub Friday May 23, 2014 (18:00–19:30 CEST/16:00–17:30 UTC).

One of the most prominent figures in the “embodied intelligence” approach to AI, and the intellectual father of the Roboy humanoid, Rolf Pfeifer and his Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab) at the University of Zurich have been a force of influence on the fields of robotics and AI for almost 30 years. He is the co-author of the seminal AI text How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, and also initiated the ShanghAI Lectures, a lecture series that brings together people from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds who share the common vision of building robots in order to better understand intelligence.

On the occasion of his retirement from the University of Zurich, Rolf will deliver a farewell lecture in which he reviews his research from the past three decades and discusses its implications for the future with other renowned researchers in AI who have influenced his work. Roboy, the AI Lab’s tendon-driven humanoid robot, will join the event and welcome the audience.

After leaving the University of Zurich, Pfeifer moves on to other projects. He has plans to pursue technology transfer in Switzerland, Japan, and China, in particular a robot lounge in Shanghai where robots (among others) care for the well-being of the guests. He will also be a visiting professor in Japan (Osaka, Chiba) and China (Shanghai). His main goals will be to bring the results from basic research into practice, and to communicate them to a broad audience.

Rolf Pfeifer’s farewell lecture took place on Friday May 23, 18:00–19:30 CEST at the University of Zurich main building.

The talk begins after the opening remarks, at the 05:20 mark.

Tweets about “#RolfGoodbAI”

ShanghAI Lectures: Yukie Nagai “What should robots learn from caregiver-infant interaction?”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 15 May 2014 14:34:06 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-10-20

In this guest lecture, Yukie Nagai from Osaka University, Japan, talks about teaching infants and robots, attention, and scaffolding.

(We apologize for the technical issues in the videoconference that prevented us from showing some of Yukie Nagai’s videos.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rZR8cZf6GQ

Slides

Yukie Nagai’s home page

ShanghAI Lectures: Alan Spreckley “Robotic Automation in Manufacturing”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 08 May 2014 18:58:56 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-10-13

This talks provides a summary of the current and future market places, key application areas, history of robotics and future trends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGgYqakUHHw

Alan Spreckley has worked for ABB since September 2003 where he has held the position of UK Channel Partner Manager for the last 4 years whilst still retaining responsibility for the Food and Beverage Segment. Alan originally joined ABB in the role of UK Segment manager – Consumer Industries with responsibility for the sales and implementation of robotic automation within food, beverage, pharmaceutical and personal care application areas.

Since joining ABB Alan has been involved in a number of industry related events which have seen him give presentations and key note speeches at many seminars and exhibitions including speaking on behalf of BARA (British Automation & Robotics Association) at Foodex Meatex 2008 and being part of an ABB team which lobbied parliament and hosted a reception at the Houses of Commons in May 2007 promoting automation in UK manufacturing and environmental awareness throughout industry. A further ABB initiative followed this which saw Alan part of a team which took a Roadshow around the UK promoting robotic automation where he gave presentations at 14 events including Scottish Food and Drink Processing and Wrexham Business Week over a 6 week period. This proved to be an extremely successful series of events which raised the profile of robotics within UK manufacturing in general with many food processing companies attending. In 2007 Alan won the ABB European Sales Award for most strategic sales within the Food and Beverage sector which recognised the efforts and commitment of ABB UK in general to the Food and Beverage industries.
Alan has more recently presented at Appetite for Engineering, Foodex exhibition and been a guest lecturer on automation at a number of Universities

Alan is a member of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to CenFRA (Centre for Food and Robotics Automation) and is on the board of The Food Processing Farady Partnership where his industry experience enables him to make a significant contribution. Alan also represents ABB Robotics on FMEG (Food Manufacturing Engineering Group).

Alan’s previous experience has seen him involved in robotic and automation solutions, primarily within the consumer industries for over 25 years with various Robotics and Automation Companies. Prior to this Alan worked with systems houses in Technical, Project Management and Sales roles covering a diverse range of application areas globally, a number of which were Food industry based.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 10 – Future Trends

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 19:39:39 +0000

This week we publish the tenth and last of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub. We have been releasing a new lecture from this series on Monday for several weeks and this is the last one. Please use the comments section below to send us your questions, and we will do our best to respond! You can learn more about the ShanghAI lectures here. Stay tuned for the 2014 Edition! And more later…on RoboHub!

Lecture 10: Future trends

This lecture, which I hosted at the from the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, recaps the whole 2013 series and looks at the future of AI, Robotics and …the Shanghai Lectures themselves :-)

“How the body shapes the way we think – principles and insights ” by Rolf Pfeifer

In yet another great lecture, Rolf summarizes the main ideas and concepts we have reviewed in the Shanghai Lectures. Check here for his thought-stimulating insights:

Guest lecture: “Autonomous Service Robots that Can Ask for Help” by Manuela Veloso

In this guest lecture Prof. Manuela Veloso, very appropriately H. A. Simon Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, gives us a compressed survey of her research. She also shows us how we may work around current limitations of AI and Robotics by simply letting robots ask for our help! What does she mean by this? Watch her lecture here:

Manuela Veloso is President of AAAI, past president of the RoboCup Federation, and a fellow of IEEE, AAAI and AAAS.

That’s all, folks, for 2013! Stay tuned, the best is yet to come!

About the ShanghAI Lectures

While in the classical approach “intelligence” was essentially viewed as information processing taking place in the brain, the more recent insight that interaction with the environment is of central importance is gaining acceptance. This has led to the metaphor of embodiment, i.e., that intelligence is always a property of an entire organism — an idea that has far-reaching implications and often leads to surprising insights, but which has not so far been widely exploited in industry practice.

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

These lectures about Natural and Artificial Intelligence have been held via videoconference at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain, the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, Italy, Humboldt University Berlin in Germany, University of Plymouth and University of Salford in the UK, and 10 other universities around the globe. Students from the participating universities are still working together on the exercises, using Webots by Cyberbotics, and Ludobots by the University of Vermont.

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

The ShanghAI Lectures differ from ‘conventional’ MOOCs as they exploit telecommunication technology to build a global, distributed lecture hall that allows rich interaction rather than simply implementing the good old fashioned TV broadcasting model on a different medium. They also differ from other AI courses as they propose a new paradigm approach to embodied cognition (a.k.a. AI and Robotics). It is a kind of Copernican revolution with respect to GOFAI and its robotics application — and thus a research program for the coming decades.

This year I coordinated the lectures, with help from Prof. Rolf Pfeifer and Dr. Nathan Labhart at the University of Zurich . Rolf Pfeifer and I provided the context (introduction, moderation, and conclusion). As always, there were 2-3 invited guest lectures each week.

ShanghAI Lectures: Simon Grand “Building Intelligent Companies: Enterpreneurial Management and Design Principles”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 16:41:21 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-11-18

In this guest lecture, Simon Grand from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, talks about building intelligent companies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82nEo8usN-M

Slides

Dr. Simon Grand is an economist and entrepreneur. Since 2001, he is the founder and academic director of RISE management research, Institute of Systemic Management and Public Governance, University of St. Gallen HSG. His research focus is strategic entrepreneurship and management in the context of innovation and change. Areas of expertise include computer science, software engineering, life sciences, pharma, cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, fashion design, and creative industries. In 2008 he became a founder and partner at TATIN Scoping Complexity in Zurich. Their focus is entrepreneurial strategy and strategy design in the context of innovation and change, and corporate governance. Since 2007, he is also senior researcher at the Institute for Art and Design Research at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel where his research focuses on design entrepreneurship, strategy design, design fiction, critical companies. Since 1998, he is research associate and senior lecturer at the University of St. Gallen HSG, with a focus on strategic management and entrepreneurship, management theory, technological innovation, and epistemology of management research. Dr. Grand studied economics, sociology and philosophy at the University of Zurich where he also completed his doctoral work at the Institute for Management Research. From 1990 to 1993 he was a research associate in the area of financial markets at the Swiss National Bank, and from 1996 to 1997 he was a research fellow in philosophy and epistemology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

ShanghAI Lectures: Verena Hafner “Interactive Robotics”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 10:59:22 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-11-18

Sensorimotor interaction between an agent and its environment seems to be the key ingredient to develop intelligent behaviour. In this talk, the importance of interaction is shown with a number of examples from robotics research in interaction and imitation. The prerequisites for imitation learning are investigated and different methods for creating body maps and identifying behaviour are presented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz5HeTU3qTY

Slides

ShanghAI Lectures: Patrick van der Smagt “Biomimetic Robotics”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 14:46:46 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-10-21

In this guest presentation, Patrick van der Smagt talks about biomimetic approaches to robot control, kinematics, grasping, and ways to use the human body to control robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0ULXgISRsw

Van der Smagt is head of terrestrial robotics and bionics at the Institute of Robotics and Dynamics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). He leads various EC projects, focusing on biomimetic robotics, with the goal of analyzing human motion behaviour and constructing the next generation of robots. This involves measuring and modelling limbs, but also understanding the underlying neural mechanisms.

To match the dexterity of the human upper extremities, van der Smagt analyses various aspects of the human biological components (using magnetic resonance tomography, sonography, electrode implantation, biophysics, and other tools).

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 9 – Towards a theory of intelligence

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:08:47 +0000

Lecture 9: Towards a theory of intelligence

This lecture, which I hosted at the the University Carlos III (Madrid, Spain), suggests principles and design guidelines for the development of embodied intelligent systems that are more similar to animal-like intelligence than what has been proposed so far. How to build a self-organizing embodied intelligence? It’s a difficult challenge, but you may find some clues here:

Guest lecture: “Evolution of Morphological Complexity” by Josh Bongard

In this guest lecture Prof. Josh Bongard from the University of Vermont (USA) shows how the evolution of morphological complexity we observe in nature can actually be reproduced in artificial simulated computational models, and gives us some insights on the very core issues of embodied intelligence. Curious? Watch his talk:

Guest lecture: “Developing intelligence in humanoid robots” by Giorgio Metta

Prof. Giorgio Metta, the Director of the iCub facitily at the IIT, Genova (Italy) shows how the problem of developing cognitive capabilities in a robo-toddler is approached on the popular iCub platform. The iCub is now used by many labs around the world as a test-rig for the study of embodied intelligence. An example was given by Angelo Cangelosi, from the University of Plymouth in one the earlier lectures of this year’s ShanghAI edition. Learn about the development of intelligence in robot babies here:

Guest lecture: “From Embodied Intelligence To Fetal Development – A Quest for The Fundamentals of Humanoid Intelligence” by Yasuo Kuniyoshi

An even more radical approach to the study of developmental learning in embodied systems (based on the synthetic methodology) is pursued by Prof. Yasuo Kuniyoshi, from the University of Tokyo. Kuniyoshi is an outstanding researcher in robotics and embodied intelligence. If you wish to really understand intelligence, perhaps you should begin with the fetus… Don’t miss this strange but fascinating talk:

ShanghAI Lectures: Rafael Núñez “Where mathematics comes from’”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 13:51:32 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-16

In this guest lecture, Rafael Núñez from the University of California, San Diego, USA, talks about Mathematics as a paradox for embodiment and cognitive mechanisms in conceptual systems and human imagination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPMMgRwf3g

ShanghAI Lectures: Nikolaos Mavridis “Robots, language, and social networks”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 18:08:18 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-16

The lecture starts with a short introduction to the Interactive Robots and Media Lab and the United Arab Emirates. Then, it continues by exploring some basic requirements towards creating Situated Conversational Assistants, i.e. devices with sensing, actuation, and spoken natural language which can assist humans in various tasks.

A concrete example of such a device is presented: Ripley the Robot, a manipulator robot with vision and speech that can serve motor commands, answer questions about the current or past situations, and get information about the current state of the world through language. In the context of such devices, a number of considerations are introduced, which then lead to the Symbol Grounding Problem, a philosophical problem which is shown to be at the heart of attempts towards building such embodied agents that can talk about their surroundings – which cannot just “plug-and-play” with traditional NLP approaches.

The symbol grounding problem is discussed, as well as its relation to semantics and semiotics, and then three practical pathways towards real-world solutions to the problem that promise to enable wider application of Situated Conversational Assistants are introduced. Then, Grounded Situation Models are briefly discussed, followed by a very quick glimpse of other requirements towards conversational robots.

The lecture finishes with a brief look at the FaceBots social robots, which utilize and publish social information on the internet in order to create sustainable human-robot relationships, as well as the Ibn Sina arabic speaking conversational robot and the modalities available for tele-participation in the interactive theatre that is built around him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phL1-FiRwUQ

Dr. Nikolaos Mavridis, PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has taught, written about, researched, and built Intelligent Systems and Robots, having been active in the area since his early youth. Currently he is serving as Ass. Professor at New York University in Abu Dhabi. He is the founder of IRML (the Interactive Robots and Media Lab), which achieved wide publicity for “Ibn Sina”, the world’s first Arabic-Language Android Robot, as well as “FaceBots”, Microsoft-award-recipient Social Robots which access info and publish on FaceBook. His past work includes “Ripley”, a language-learning robot with abilities comparable to those assessed by the token test, a test administered to 3-year-old children. He is a member of the IEEE, has served in numerous leadership positions in the past, is now a TEDx curator and has been a TEDx speaker twice.

Watch Dr. Mavridis at:

ShanghAI Lectures: Louis-Philippe Demers “Embodiment and robotic arts”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:18:40 +0000

The Blind Robot by Louis-Philippe Demers is a reference to the works of Merleau-Ponty and his example of the body extension of the blind man’s cane, where the cane not only senses the world but also reveals the blind man as blind. Photo credit: Louis-Philippe Demers

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-16

Embodied agents have a material existence whilst audiences share this very same world and space. This lecture explores the far-reaching and often surprising implications of embodiment, both from the perspective of the audience and of the robotic agents in Robotic Arts, which empower intangible contributions from the cultural context, the suspension of disbelief and the attribution of intention towards any outside physical objects acting upon the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_JSIqb_TAA

Louis-Philippe Demers makes large-scale installations and performances. His main areas of work are entertainment robotics and interaction design. Over the past two decades, he participated in more than seventy artistic and stage productions and has built more than 300 machines. His projects can be found in theatre, opera, subway stations, art museums, science museums, music events and trade shows.

Demers’ works have been featured at major venues such as Lille 2004, Expo 1992 and 2000, Sonambiente, ISEA, Siggraph and Sonar. He received three mentions at Ars Electronica, the Distinction of Prix Ars 96, the first prize of Vida 2.0, a mention for the Tiller Girls at Vida 12.0, the Interactive prize for Lightforms 98 and six prizes for Devolution including two Helpmann Awards, the Australian equivalent of the Broadway’s Tony.

Demers was Professor of Digital Media and Exhibit Design/Scenography at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung, the academic institution affiliated to the world renowned Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM, Germany). Since he joined the Interaction and Entertainment Research Centre and the newly founded School of Art, Design and Media at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore).

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 8-II – Education and Industry Session

Fabio Bonsignorio — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 15:16:12 +0000

Lecture 8-II: Education and Industry Session

This lecture hosted by Prof. Samia Nefti-Meziani from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK, is about higher education and industrial impact of the ‘ShanghAI paradigm’. You should not be surprised to see early glimpses of the next industrial revolution enabled by intelligent machines in Manchester – this was the iconic example of industrial city during the very first industrial revolution.

“ITN Marie Curie Network SMART-E: Advanced Robotics for Sustainable Manufacturing in Europe” by Samia Nefti-Meziani

Prof. Samia Nefti-Meziani shows how robotics and AI/cognition can concretely help in both industry and in everyday life. She also announces the newly funded research network on the application of the Shanghai concepts to the industrial world – making this lecture more than just an ‘Academic chat’. Want to know more? Watch Samia’s lecture:

Guest lecture: “Robotics at Festo – From Bionics to Industrial & Educational Robots” by Dirk Pensky

Dr. Pensky is a high-level manager at Festo, which is headquartered in Germany. In this guest lecture he shows us the ubercool bioinspired robotics systems developed by his company. If you want to stay informed on his cutting-edge research, watch his talk:

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Tamim Asfour “Robots think with their hands”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 03:13:51 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-16

The design of cognitive situated robots able to learn to operate in the real world and to interact and communicate with humans, must model and reflectively reason about their perceptions and actions in order to learn, act, predict and react appropriately. Such capabilities can only be attained by embodied agents through physical interaction with and exploration of the real world and requires the simultaneous consideration of perception and action. Representations built from such interactions are much better adapted to guiding behaviour than human crafted rules and allow embodied agents to gradually extend their cognitive horizon.

In the first part of the talk, I present the concept of Object-Action Complexes (OAC, pronounced “oak”) which has been introduced by the European project PACO-PLUS (www.paco-plus.org) to emphasize the notion that objects and actions are inseparably intertwined and that categories are therefore determined (and also limited) by the action an agent can perform and by the attributes of the world it can perceive. Entities (things) in the world of a robot (or human) will only become semantically useful objects through the action that the agent can/will perform on them. The second part of the talk presents current results toward the implementation of integrated 24/7 humanoid robots able to 1) perform complex grasping and manipulation tasks in a kitchen environment 2) autonomously acquire object knowledge through visual and haptic exploration and 3) learn actions from human observation. The developed capabilities are demonstrated on the humanoid robots ARMAR-IIIa and ARMAR-IIIb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJLzV418pF4

Slides

Tamim Asfour is senior research scientist and leader of the Humanoid Research Group at Humanoids and Intelligence Systems Lab, Institute for Anthropomatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

His major research interest is humanoid robotics. In particular, his research topics include action learning from human observation, goal-directed imitation learning, dexterous grasping and manipulation, active vision and active touch, whole-body motion planning, cognitive control architectures, system integration, robot software and hardware control architecture, motor control and mechatronics.

He is leading the system integration tasks and the development team of the humanoid robot series ARMAR in the German Humanoid Robotics Project (SFB 588) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He is currently involved in the following projects funded by the European Commission: PACO-PLUS, GRASP and Xperience.

Tamim Asfour is member of the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and European Chair of the IEEE-RAS Technical Committee on Humanoid Robots. He is member the Executive Board of the German Association of Robotics (DGR: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Robotik). He serves as member on several program committees and review panels.

He received his diploma degree in Electrical Engineering (Dipl.-Ing.) in 1994 and his PhD in Computer Science (Dr.-Ing.) in 2003 from the University of Karlsruhe. In 2003 he was awarded with the Research Center for Information Technology (FZI) price for his outstanding Ph.D. thesis on sensorimotor control in humanoid robotics and the development of the humanoid robot ARMAR. Since September 2010 he holds an Adjunct Professor position at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), College of Computing, Interactive Computing.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 8-I – Ontogenetic development: From locomotion to cognition

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:53:23 +0000

Lecture 8-I: Ontogenetic development: From locomotion to cognition

In this lecture, hosted at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain, I show how it is possible to ground ‘understanding’ on data streams coming from the physical interaction of an agent in the environment, and discuss the many open issues that remain. For example, setting information theory in an embodied framework is challenging, but the road ahead looks promising. So, what’s the link between locomotion to cognition? Is there one? Check out the lecture:

“Motor primitives and compositionality: From humans to the Octopus” by Tamar Flash

There is more to motion learning and planning in humans and animals than is usually thought. Some weird mathematics such as Lie algebras seem to shed some understanding on motion planning in animals (humans included), and could help toward the devlopment of robotics systems that are similar to natural embodied intelligent agents. Prof. Flash, from the Dept. of Applied Math. and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel does research on motor control in humans and robotic systems. Her current interest is in investigating the neural control of flexible hyper-redundant arms in the Octopus. Want to learn more? Have a look here:

Prof. Flash is from the Dept. of Applied Math. and Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

Guest Lecture – “Autopoiesis” by Luisa Damiano

Philosopher Luisa Damiano, Associate Researcher in Philosophy of Science at the Research Center on Complex Systems (CERCO) of the University of Bergamo and founder of the Epistemology of the Sciences of the Artificial Research Group (ESARG), takes a critical look at ‘synthetical methodology’ and looks beyond the context of robotics AI/cognition to include ‘Autopoiesis’ – a concept introduced by Maturana and Varela in the epistemology of Life Sciences. Curious about ‘synthetic methodology’ outside robotics and cognition? Do you want to know what ‘Autopoiesis’ means? See here:

Guest Lecture – “The two souls of synthetic biology: Experimental approaches” by Luigi Luisi

What is a minimum set living system? Why are certain proteins used in natural living systems but not others? Couldn’t it just be by ‘contingency’? Professor Pier Luigi Luisi is a leading researcher in synthetic biology, and his latest book is called The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology. He is currently writing a book with Fritjof Capra. Watch Luisi’s lecture:

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Shuhei Miyashita “Tribolon: Scalable Self-Assembling Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 15:20:34 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-02

Self-assembly is of crucial importance in the biological realm at all scales. This talk introduces a series of self-assembling robots developed in our project, and discusses key features that such robots are expected to possess. The robots give rise to unique insight into the interdependencies between the components’ morphology, systems’ stochasticity, and the emerged behaviors, and cast light on the design principle of self-assembling components. We believe that the research introduced deepens the practical understanding of the formation of spontaneous structure and function, firmly provides knowledge for the realization of scalable self-assembly systems, and will, ultimately brings us closer to answering the nature of “living” systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8mKmXQzDWg

Shuhei Miyashita received his masters degree in computational intelligence and systems science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, his bachelor degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Jouchi University, and his PhD degree at the AI Lab, University of Zurich in Switzerland. He is a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. His publications can be found at http://shuhei.net/.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 7 – Design principles of intelligent systems

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 14:45:55 +0000

This week we publish the seventh of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub. You can learn more about the ShanghAI lectures here.

Lecture 7 – Design principles of intelligent systems

This lecture, which I hosted at the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, looks at the foundational issues and the successes and failures of AI from a critical perspective. It details the novel principles discussed in Rolf Pfeifer’s and Josh Bongard’s book ‘How the body shapes the way we think’ , the importance of considering the full embodied agent, the necessity of self-organization, and questions more recent AI successes, such as IBM Watson.

“Making robots that really feel” by Kevin O’Regan

Prof. O’ Regan, former director of the Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes, in France, is a leading researcher on perception. He questioned established notions of the nature of visual perception and predicted, with collaborators, the phenomenon of “change blindness”. His current work involves exploring the empirical consequences of a new “sensorimotor” approach to vision and sensation in general.

In this talk he discusses the implications and perspectives of ‘phemomenal consciousness’. What colour is ‘red’? Why doesn’t red ‘sound like a bell’? Watch Kevin’s talk:

Guest Lecture – “Visual Servo Control of Cable-Driven Soft Robotic Manipulator” by Hesheng Wang

In previous talks we explored issues of designing soft robot arm. In this talk Prof. Wang from the Autonomous Robot Lab at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University shows how to control them:

You may notice that the approach is fairly classic, and that we are still lacking the models to do it from a morphological computation and self-organization standpoint – although I and some of the other ShanghAI lecturers have some ideas about how to do this.

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Serge Kernbach “Collective and Modular Robotics: Fundamentials and Frontiers”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:59:51 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-02

Collective systems play very important role on Earth, and we encounter them in all sizes, scales and forms; in biological and technological areas; in ocean, air and on the ground. Examples include viruses, different colloidal systems, nano- and micro-scale particles, huge world of social insects and animals; collective systems in robotics vary from nano- up to large space exploration robots. To some extent, collective systems are ubiquitous. Such a prevalence and diversity and can be explained by several unique properties: scalability, reliability, flexibility, self-developmental capabilities. This guest lecture introduces the area of collective robotics and answers the questions “what and why”. Special attention is given to reconfigurable robotics, we discuses a big vision of “universal modularity” and several ways of its achieving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_V_3yN1ZrA

Serge Kernbach is the head of the collective robotics group at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He graduated in electronic engineering and computer science in 1994. During 1996-1998 he received several research grants, in 2007 his doctoral thesis won the faculty-award as the best dissertation of the year. Since 2004 he has been a coordinator of several European research projects on the field of collective robotics. Serge’s main research interest is focused on artificial collective systems, he is the author and co-author of over 100 articles in international journals and conferences, edited a few books related to robotics. Since 2000 he acquired for IPVS more than 3.5 M€ in different research projects.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 6 – Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration II

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:29:08 +0000

Lecture 6 – Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration II

In this second lecture hosted by the Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Matteo Cianchetti builds on the previous lecture to talk about building soft actuators for soft robots. In Matteo’s lecture, titled “Soft actuator design methods“, he explains that the devil is in the details, but that it’s possible to build soft actuators by insightfully exploiting the properties of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). Want to learn how?

Guest Lecture – “Can ‘Synthetic Methodology’ cause a paradigm shift?” by Minoru Asada

In this talk Prof. Minoru Asada from the University of Osaka, in Japan, shows the results and discusses the underlying principles of his research on developmental robotics and the of the psychological development of the basic human cognitive functions in the baby and even in the fetus! This is an iconic example of synthetic methodology application.

How can we simulate the development of a fetus, for example? And above all, can ‘Synthetic Methodology’ really cause a paradigm shift? Watch Asada’s lecture here:

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Xiao’an Li “Action Skill Developmental Learning for Autonomous Soccer Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 16:08:56 +0000

Robocub 2013 in Eindhoven.

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In the past decade, soccer robots have been developed greatly, and some of the robot soccer games have been showing more and more attractions. However, many open problems such as how to train soccer robots in the real world, and how the soccer robots learn the action skills incrementally or communicatively have been challenging us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nygqkdknA-I

In this talk, we will firstly introduce the motivations for our research. Then, some prospective approaches related with developmental learning of autonomous robots will be discussed. Also, we will propose some ideas and show some practical work for action skill developmental learning in autonomous mobile robots. At last, we will point out the potential advantages of developmental learning and the further research directions.

Xiaoan Li received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Information Engineering in 1987, Control Theory and Application in 1990, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Application Technology in 2000, respectively, all from the department of computer, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an city, China. Since 1997 he has been an associate professor. From May 2008 to May 2009, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Michigan State University. Dr. Li is the founder of the Soccer Robot team in Northwestern Polytechnical University, and the chief advisor from 2003 to 2009. His research interests include computational intelligence, learning and cooperation of multi-agent robot system, the real-time intelligent control.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 5 – Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration I

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 21:20:11 +0000

Lecture 5 – Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration I

Hosted by Prof. Cecilia Laschi from the Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa, Italy, this ShanghAI episode puts together contrasting approaches to ‘embodied intelligence’ and ‘embodied cognition’ in her lecture titled “How an octopus can help build a robot”.

Laschi, who among many other things has coordinated the European ‘Octopus’ project, shows a radical approach to embodiment starting from the bottom-up, by taking us through the development of the physical soft structure of a robot octopus. Soft robotics has a lot to say about embodied cognition and morphological computation, and also involves several non-trivial engineering challenges. Can building an artificial octopus really help to advance robotics? Don’t miss Cecilia Laschi’s lecture:

Guest Lecture – “From scene segmentation to task based grasping” by Danica Kragic

In this talk Prof. Danica Kragic from the KTH in Stockolm, Sweden shows the benefits of embodiment to grasping – from a top-down approach based on computer vision, machine learning and AI. Kragic has led the Grasp european project, and is a leading researcher in the area of AI and robotics. Whatever DARPA tells you, the problem of grasping still isn’t solved. For example we still don’t have a robot that is able to take the dishes from a real world sink and put them into a dishwasher (this would be a killer application, do you agree?) How long will we have to wait?

A top-down approach to solving ‘real problems’ within the embodied approach to AI and robotics still has several basic research questions to answer. If you have been following the previous lectures you may have noticed that many researchers are approaching the issue of embodied cognition with sometimes very different methods and models, and a synthesis at the level of concrete mathematical models is still missing.

The good news is that we may be on right path. Find out what Kragic has to say on the matter:

Guest Lecture – “Hard Work for Robotics from Soft Actuators” by Bram Vanderborght

Soft robots need soft actuators, and building soft actuators is not a trivial task. Prof. Bram Vanderborght is with the Vrije University Brussels and does cutting-edge research on soft actuators, in particular in legged locomotion of humanoid robots. Dive into the modeling and engineering challenges and subtle solutions presented by Bram Vanderborght in his talk:

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Adrianne Wortzel “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 05:00:48 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

This lecture discusses the relevance of embedding dramatic scenarios and expressive language into methodologies employed in the research and development of biochemical and/or electronic sentient beings. The author demonstrates how adding imaginative modalities to current practices can afford a profound and positive effect on outcomes.

Please note that due to some technical problems, some videos in the recording come without audio. We apologize for the inconvenience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nkH37FCi8

Adrianne Wortzel explores a range of new technologies as web works, robotic installations and performance productions. Her Globe Theater Repertory Company of robots were featured in installations in Cooper Union’s “Technoseduction” exhibition, Creative Time’s “Art in the Anchorage”; Ars Electronic, “Fleshfactor” and Kunstpflug e.V., Berlin “Arreale99”. She wrote, produced and designed “Sayonara Diorama”, a performance production with robots, live performers and responsive remote performances via videoconferencing, via an Artist-in-Residence Grant at Lehman College Art Gallery in New York funded by the Electronic Media and Film Program of the New York State Council on the Arts.

She has organized and produced international performative webcasts, and was co-host and content provider for “Art Dirt” a weekly live video-streamed interview format webcast originating from New York. She is a recipient of a 2000-2001 National Science Foundation grant awarded for creating a robotic theater at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where she is currently working on her project ELIZA REDUX, a series of webcast and videotaped psychoanalytic sessions between a human and a robot.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 4 – Evolution: Cognition from scratch

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:28:34 +0000

This week we publish the fourth of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub — we will release a new lecture from this series every Monday until the series is complete. Please use the comments section below to send us your questions, and we will do our best to respond! You can learn more about the ShanghAI lectures here.

Lecture 4 – Evolution: Cognition from scratch

If you believe that it’s too difficult to develop the mathematical models required to arrive at a new concept of embodied AI and robotics, this lecture will offer you hope. In her talk, Prof. Verena Hafner, from Humboldt University in Berlin, discusses the concept of ‘body maps’ from an embodied intelligence perspective, and shows how they can emerge from sensorimotor flow, through information distances in the data flow and/or an internal simulation. In this context the ‘body map’ is not a symbolic ‘representation’ of the agent’s body, but rather an emerging structure used by the agent in its interaction with its environment.

“Creating body maps” by Verena Hafner

“Evolution: cognition from scratch” by Rolf Pfeifer

In the second talk, Rolf Pfeifer shows how evolutionary processes at different time scales drive the development of embodied intelligence in nature, and how they can be mimicked (with surprisingly good results) for the development of artificial systems, including … pipes and antennas!

How can we exploit Gene Regulatory Networks for the development of a new paradigm for robots?

Guest Lecture – “How can we test for artificial life? Complexity and computation in Nature” by Hector Zenil

An unlikely yellow ‘computer’?

The skeptics will think that certain concepts such as ‘life’ or ‘self-organization’ are too elusive and ill-defined to be useful to AI. Hector Zeni, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockolm, Sweden, does cutting-edge research on the applications of Algorithmic Information Theory to the modeling of life and cognition. Witness how AIT might come to the rescue with this lecture, also hosted by Humboldt University Berlin …

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Hiroshi Yokoi “Future Trend”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 05:45:07 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In this guest lecture, Hiroshi Yokoi from University of Electro-Communication, Chofu, Japan, talks about prosthetic robot hands, EMG devices, bio-feedback, and the Japanese trends in Brain-Machine Interfaces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sLB9ARwFNU

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 3: Cognition and embodiment

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:39:04 +0000

This week we publish the third of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub — we will release a new lecture from this series every Monday until the series is complete. Please use the comments section below to send us your questions, and we will do our best to respond! You can learn more about the ShanghAI lectures here.

Lecture 3 – Cognition and embodiment – Language learning in children and robots: A developmental robotics approach

This week’s lecture discusses an important problem: how ‘symbols’ and language emerge and are ‘grounded’ from the flow of sensory-motor data. In this lecture, Angelo Cangelosi, Director of the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at the University of Plymouth, explains the developmental approach to robotics (and psychology) and offers a remarkable example of ‘synthetic methodology’ for the study of children’s intellectual development. Cangelosi, who’s original background is in psychology, is a leading researcher in developmental robotics.

Do you want to know what ‘gavagai’ means? And why this is an important issue? Watch the video:

Notice the experiments on the emergence of natural number from sensory-motor data flow. Aren’t they intriguing? Do you remember ‘Where mathematics come from?’ by Lakoff and Nuñez? You may also check Nuñez’ s lectures in the ShanghAI archive!

This year the ShanghAI Lectures have been more ‘distributed’ than they had been in the past. While Rolf and I have developed the main ideas for the embodied cognition approach to AI and Robotics following the approach described in ‘How the Body Shapes the Way We Think’, in our text book we have devoted significant space to describing overlapping perspectives of embodied cognition from different researchers. Some lectures have been ‘hosted’ sites other than Madrid or Zurich. This was the first lecture broadcast by the University of Plymouth.

Guest Lecture – “Does Robotics Really Need Embodiment?” by Vincent Mueller

What we usually refer to as ‘embodiment’ is not the trivial concept that ‘intelligence needs a body’. The epistemological problems raised by the ‘embodiment’ and the ‘synthetic methodology’ approaches are not trivial either. In this talk, Vincent Mueller plays the devil’s advocate:

Vincent Mueller is a philosopher with the Anatolia College Thessaloniki and the University of Oxford. He is the coordinator of euCogIII, the largest and most important European network cognition science researchers. With almost 1000 members, euCogIII spans many disciplines, including AI, neuroscience and philosophy.

Guest Lecture – “Morphological Computation and Soft Robotics” by Helmut Hauser

A central aspect of ’embodied intelligence’ or ’embodied cognition’ is the the fact that part of the ‘control’ is offloaded to the physical dynamics of the agent, in what is called ‘morphological computation’. In order to exploit morphological computation in the development of artificial cognitive agents, and to better understand its role in natural intelligence, quantitative models are needed. In this lecture Helmut Hauser proposes a possible model, and also shows how issues related to morphological computation are intertwined with soft robot modeling.

Helmut Hauser is with the AI Lab of the University of Zurich and is one of the few people who dares to look for quantitative models of morphological computation (another one is …myself :-)).

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Wenwei Yu “A Simulation Study on Reflexive Responses during Walking”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 14:30:30 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In this guest lecture, Wenwei Yu from Chiba University, Japan, introduces his approach to assistive technology and talks about (simulation) experiments in human walking and reflexive responses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLVPmBgWUo

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: Sukhan Lee “Cognitive Recognition for Service Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 15:30:37 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-10

Recognition has been a subject of intense research interest to computer vision, AI, cognitive science, as well as robotics communities for, at least, several decades. As a result, a rich list of research outcomes on computer based recognition and understanding of symbols, objects, faces, gestures, as well as scenes are available to date in the form of publications, open source libraries, as well as commercial products. One of the major issues in recognition, especially in 2D recognition, has been how to deal with variations due to illumination, perspective, distance, texture as well as occlusion. Conventional approaches to engineering solution include the development of photometric and geometric features invariant to such variations and the efficient organization of visual memory for appearance/view based matching. Despite much success in recognition, the conventional approaches as described above are turned out to be inadequate for dealing with recognition involved in robotic services such as errand, home maid, etc., services in real-world environments. This is due to the fact that the environmental variations service robots must deal with are often beyond what conventional approaches can handle and, furthermore, the preconditions for recognition, such as the target being in the proper sight of and distance from camera in the first place, may not necessarily be met when recognition is ordered. It is apparent that recognition for service robots should extend its scope beyond conventional matching and classification toward more human-like capability under the framework of cognitive vision or cognitive recognition. In this lecture, I will introduce what constitutes cognitive recognition: namely, 1) bottom-up and top-down based saliency detection for implementing focus of attention as a means of efficient yet weak initial recognition step, 2) integration with knowledge to make best use of recognition context, 3) probabilistic evidence fusion for reaching reliable decision, 4) proactive collection of evidences for better decision, 5) cognitive engine where recognition is processed as a self-defined mission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-oHUbwprLc

Sukhan Lee received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, 1974 and 1972, respectively, and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, 1982. From 1983 to 1997, he was a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Southern California, and also a Senior Member of Technical Staff for Intelligent Robot R&D Programs, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA and California Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1997. From 1998 to 2003, he was an Executive Vice President and Chief Research Officer of MEMS, Nano Systems and Intelligent Systems Programs and Breakthrough Research Team, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. Since 2003 he has been a professor and director of the School of Information and Communication Engineering and Intelligent Systems Research, respectively. Prof. Sukhan Lee has his research interest in the areas of Cognitive Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Micro/Nano Electro-Mechanical systems.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Part 2: Embodied intelligence

Fabio Bonsignorio — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 22:15:13 +0000

This week we publish the second of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub — we will release a new lecture from this series every Monday until the series is complete. Please use the comments section below to send us your questions, and we will do our best to respond! You can learn more about the ShanghAI lectures here.

Lecture 2 – Embodied Intelligence

“Evolution embodies information in every part of every organism. … This information doesn’t have to be copied into the brain at all. It doesn’t have to be “represented” in “data structures” in the nervous system. It can be exploited by the nervous system, however, which is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information in the hormonal systems just as it is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information embodied in your limbs and eyes.” – D.Dennett, Kind of Minds, 1996

Many people will probably agree with Dennett from a philosophical standpoint, but what are the implications for robotics research and robot development?

There are many: What is the Frame-of-Reference problem? How we can get rid of it in principle? How can we get rid of it in practice?

Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t come with labels. How can we associate symbols with a continuous stream of sensory stimulation? What is the cognitive role of physical interaction of the agent with the world? Check Rolf’s lecture to inspire your thoughts.

Guest Lecture – “From Bio-Inspired to Institutional-Inspired Collective Robotics” by Pedro Lima

The implications of the embodied intelligence paradigm are wide and deep.

In this talk Pedro Lima, from the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal, shows how human institutions can be seen as emerging processes in swarms of embodied intelligent agents, a.k.a. ‘robots’. This view has some implication on the economic sciences, too. In Portugal they are sensitive to ‘economics paradigms’ and know that current ones have some flaws :-). On the other hand an ‘institutional-inspired’ approach seems quite beneficial also for network robot development.

Intriguing, right? Watch the full lecture here:

Pedro Lima, is a professor at IST and a leading researcher in robotics and AI, and above all he is a nice guy and a subtle and deep thinker!

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Alois Knoll, Mary Ellen Foster, Manuel Giuliani “Joint-Action Science and Technology”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 18:00:43 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-10

The success of the human species critically depends on our extraordinary ability to engage in joint action. Our perceptions, decisions and behaviour are tuned to those of others with whom we share beliefs, intentions and goals and thus form a group. These insights underlie the motivation of the JAST project, from which this presentation shows results. One of these results was the development of a robot that is able to joint-actly work together with a human on a collaborative assembly task.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSI2e73AoBM

Alois C. Knoll received the diploma (M.Sc.) degree in Electrical/Communications Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany,in 1985 and his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in computer science from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, in 1988. He served on the faculty of the computer science department of TU Berlin until 1993, when he qualified for teaching computer science at a university (habilitation). He then joined the Technical Faculty of the University of Bielefeld, where he was a full professor and the director of the research group Technical Informatics until 2001. Between May 2001 and April 2004 he was a member of the board of directors of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. At AIS he was head of the research group “Robotics Construction Kits”, dedicated to research and development in the area of educational robotics. Since autumn 2001 he has been a professor of Computer Science at the Computer Science Department of the Technische Universität München. He is also on the board of directors of the Central Institute of Medical Technology at TUM (IMETUM-Garching); between April 2004 and March 2006 he was Executive Director of the Institute of Computer Science at TUM.

His research interests include cognitive, medical and sensor-based robotics, multi-agent systems, data fusion, adaptive systems and multimedia information retrieval. In these fields he has published over 200 technical papers and guest-edited international journals. He has participated (and has coordinated) several large scale national collaborative research projects (funded by the EU, the DFG, the DAAD, the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia). He initiated and was the program chairman of the First IEEE/RAS Conference on Humanoid Robots (IEEE-RAS/RSJ Humanoids2000), he was general chair of IEEE Humanoids2003 and general chair of Robotik 2004, the largest German conference on robotics, and he served on several other organising committees. Prof. Knoll is a member of the German Society for Computer Science (Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI)) and the IEEE.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Part 1 – Intelligence: Things can be seen differently

Fabio Bonsignorio — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 22:10:31 +0000

This week marks the launch of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub — we will release a new lecture from this series every Monday until the series is complete. Please use the comments section below to send us your questions, and we will do our best to respond! You can learn more about the ShanghAI lectures here.

Lecture 1 – Intelligence: Things can be seen differently

If you are not interested in precisely predicting the motion of a handful of ‘anomalous’ stars (nowadays known as planets), then there is no reason to assume that the earth is not sitting at the center of the universe. Ptolemaic astronomy was good astronomy, after all. And if you were an astronomer of the XVI century you may have had good reason to think that ‘solving astronomy’ was simply a matter of adding the ‘right’ epicycles ;-). Many did. Why worry about just five stars that do not model correctly when there are several thousand stars that are perfectly predictable?

AI and Robotics have been very successful in the past fifty years, thanks to Google, IBM Watson, SIRI or Da Vinci, Opportunity, Bosto … oops Google again ;-). Yet something is still missing …

With all the due ‘caveats’, the first lecture of the 2013 ShanghAI series insinuates the doubt that we might be in a similar situation as regards AI and Robotics … that a paradigm change might be necessary in order to be able to build ‘real’ robots that are more similar to those dreamed by Hollywood, and that this new paradigm should be more similar to the massively multi-agent, self organizing, biological processes, exploiting ‘morphological computation’ than to the Good Old Fashioned top down ‘Cartesian’ paradigm, maybe with some machine learning in addition (modern ‘epicycles’?).

Are you intrigued? Do you wildly disagree? Check out the first lecture and learn about all the 2013 participants in the 2013 inaugural lecture:

About the ShanghAI Lectures

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

The lectures have also been streamed to allow remote participation to anybody.

ShanghAI Lectures: Samia Nefti-Mezziani “Non-rational Particle Swarm Optimization”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 15:00:47 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-03

Among the evolutionary algorithms, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) represents an optimization method where individuals, called particles, collaborate as a swarm to reach a collective goal. However, the usual logical decision processes used in the literature to model individual agent behaviour are generally found to be inadequate when the phenomena of uncertainty and risk are factored into the evolutionary process; and also incapable of fully emulating actual human decision-making behaviours under risk and uncertainty.

In this talk, I will propose a significant modification to agent reasoning processes employed so far in conventional Swarm Intelligence Techniques. I will show that endowing each particle with a non-rational behaviour, in the sense of Prospect Theory, can improve considerably the efficiency of global searching procedures. The results of this proposed technique is illustrated by numerical results obtained from applications to classical problems quoted in the literature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_MytzonS8

Dr Samia Nefti is Associate Professor Reader in Computational Intelligence at University of Salford and head of Computational Intelligence and Robotics Research Group. She is a leading expert internationally in artificial intelligence and her research interests over the last 19 years are concerned with the development of cognitive models for information processing and decision support systems for complex and non-linear systems and fuzzy optimasation and clustering. Dr Nefti has published and edited extensively in the above areas, which appeared in leading academic journals. She has also organized many international and national conference and workshop. She has been involved and led national (EPSRC, TSB) and European (FP5, FP6) multi-disciplinary research projects. She is a Chartered member of BCS and active member of the European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems and Vice-President of IEEE UKRI Chapter in Robotics and Automation.

ShanghAI Lectures: Christopher Lueg “Scaffolding & Embodiment: Perspectives in Human Computer Interaction”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 13:00:51 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-03

In this talk Professor Lueg will discuss how embodiment and scaffolding perspectives discussed in the ShanghAI Lectures on Natural and Artificial Intelligence can also be used to look at, and re-interpret, research topics in human computer interaction ranging from human information behavior in the real world to information interaction in online communities. In his work Professor Lueg understands human computer interaction as interaction with pretty much any kind of computer-based system ranging from desktop computers and mobile phones to microwave ovens and parking meters.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auOMNiYj-FM

Dr. sc.nat. Christopher Lueg is Professor of Computing at the University of Tasmania (Australia) where he established the ‘Information and Interaction’ research group. He was also a Research Fellow of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for 2009-2012. Christopher’s research interests tend to manifest at the intersection of computer science, information science and cognitive science. He is teaching and researching in areas including human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), ubiquitous computing and context awareness, human information behavior and online communities. He edited (with Danyel Fisher, Microsoft Research) the book ‘From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with Social Information Spaces’ published by Springer in the CSCW series. His research students made him drink a Funky Monkey at Oomph.

ShanghAI Lectures: Weidong Chen “Modeling and Control of Mobile Robot Networks”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 15:00:10 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-26
Swarm intelligence of mobile robots is defined as a mobile robot network with only local interactions and finite sensing capabilities which can achieve global objectives and collective behaviors. The most well-known examples of swarm intelligence in nature are discovered in the collective behaviors of ant and bee colonies. Self-healing is one of the most important components in swarm intelligence.

In this talk, we will provide a theoretical model as well as a control method for self-healing of mobile robot networks based on motion synchronization. Using the graph and complex network theories, we establish the model of a mobile robot network which combines switched network topologies with an interaction dynamic model for describing the motion of the robots. We propose a performance metric of the network topology to evaluate the stability and the robustness of motion synchronization, analyze the effect of failed robots upon the network topology, and show the necessity and principle of the self-healing method based on only local interactions. A fully distributed and recursive topology control for self-healing with switched topologies is then proposed. We show that the self-healing algorithm can prevent the network topology from being separated into two or more disconnected parts, and maintain the performance of the network. Based on the Lyapunov exponent, we further provide a criterion of the stability of the network with the proposed distributed control. Finally, we demonstrate the advantages of our self-healing method by performing simulations of two typical tasks, formation generation and coverage.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVU84UpVFA

ShanghAI Lectures: Eugen Elmiger “Drives for Intelligent Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 15:30:35 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-19

In this guest lecture, Eugen Elmiger from maxon motor ag, Sachseln, Switzerland, gives an overview of the precision motors his company produces, and shows how they are used in robotics and other areas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Q_srUcSvs

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition: Live webcast on Thursday, 09:30 CET

Fabio Bonsignorio — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 08:00:39 +0000

If you have been following the ShanghAI Lectures, you will not want to miss the live webcast of the final 2013 lecture this Thursday starting at 9:30 CET. Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich) will explain why a mind needs a body, Manuela Veloso (Carnegie Mellon University) will explain how humans may help robots for mutual benefit, and W. Chen, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Vincent Mueller (ATC and University of Oxford), Rolf Pfeifer, Manuela Veloso and Vera Zabotkina (Russian State University for the Humanities) will discuss if embodiment is really a must for AI and the future of education on natural and artificial intelligence (we think you should study them together, actually).

In the next coming weeks we will release all the lectures of the 2013 Edition, including remarks and insights. Don’t miss them!

Watch Thursday’s live stream here …

https://arcamm.uc3m.es/arcamm/uc3mtv/directo.php?ID=16

Agenda (all times in CET)

December 19th 2013
Lecture 10 : Future Trends
09:30 Fabio Bonsignorio: Welcome and introduction
09:35 Rolf Pfeifer: How the body shapes the way we think – principles and insights
10:25 Manuela Veloso: Autonomous Service Robots that Can Ask for Help
11:00 Break
11:10 Panel: W.Chen, V.Mueller, R.Pfeifer, M.Veloso, V.Zabotkina
11:10 Panel: Q1: Does AI need embodiment?
11:40 Panel: Q2: The future of the ShanghAI lectures and education on natural and artificial intelligence
12:10 Good bye! See you in 2014!

About the ShanghAI Lectures

This year I coordinated the lectures, with a remarkable help from Prof. Rolf Pfeifer and Dr. Nathan Labhart at the University of Zurich . Me and Rolf Pfeifer will provide the context (introduction, moderation, and conclusion). As always, there are 2-3 invited guest lectures each week.

The 2013 edition presented guest lectures by some of the frontier researchers on natural and artificial intelligence, including a glimpse at artificial and synthetic life:

Minoru Asada (Osaka University)
Josh Bongard (University of Vermont)
Angelo Cangelosi (Universty of Plymouth)
Luisa Damiano (University of Bergamo)
Tamar Flash (Weizmann Institute)
Helmut Hauser (University of Zurich)
Danica Kragic (KTH)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi (University of Tokyo)
Pedro Lima (IST Lisbon)
Luigi Luisi (Roma Tre University)
Giorgio Metta (IIT)
Vincent Mueller (Anatolia College and Oxford University)
Kevin O’Regan (Paris Descartes/CNRS/ENS)
Bram Vanderborght (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Manuela Veloso (CMU)
Hector Zenil (Karolinska Institutet)

The ShanghAI Lectures project aims to:

Build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Embodied Intelligence
Make education and knowledge on cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to everyone
Explore novel methods of knowledge transfer
Overcome the complexity of a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning context
Bring global teaching to a new level

These lectures about Natural and Artificial Intelligence are held via videoconference at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain, the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, Italy, Humboldt University Berlin in Germany, University of Plymouth and University of Salford in the UK, and 10 other universities around the globe. Students from the participating universities work together on the exercises, using Webots by Cyberbotics, and Ludobots by the University of Vermont.

They differ from ‘conventional’ MOOCs as they exploit telecommunication technology to build a global lecture hall that allows rich interaction rather than simply implementing the good old fashioned TV broadcasting model on a different medium. They also differ from other AI courses as they propose a new paradigm approach to embodied cognition (a.k.a. AI and Robotics). It is a kind of Copernican revolution with respect to GOFAI and its robotics application — and thus a research program for the coming decades.

ShanghAI Lectures: Josh Bongard “Resilient Machines”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:00:37 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-19

If the body plays a central role in intelligence, as a roboticist, how do we choose an appropriate body for our robot? Evolutionary robotics allows us to automatically optimize the physical layout of our robots as we also optimize their controllers. In this talk I will demonstrate how selecting or evolving an appropriate robot body can (1) simplify control, (2) make seemingly difficult tasks easier, (3) increase evolvability, (4) provide new behaviors, (5) facilitate the extraction of information from the environment, (6) generate new research questions, and (7) improve scalability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2B0oJyBfF8

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

ShanghAI Lectures: Hisato Kobayashi “AI-ish approach for complicated robot control”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 07:30:19 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-12

If we try to describe any kinds of robot by mathematical models, they must be very complicated equations. Even, such robotic systems are categorized as a conventional dynamic system consist of positive definite inertia matrix, Coriolis’ force term, friction term, gravity term and so on, we cannot derive any authentic control scheme from such complicated nonlinear systems.

Of course, we can make a servo system for a joint control but we do not have any systematic control scheme for whole robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-n6meJXyQo

Hisato Kobayashi was born in Japan 1951. He graduated from Waseda University, he received both master degree and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Waseda University in 1975 and 1978 respectively. During 1977-1982, he was a research associate of Tokyo University Agriculture and Technology. He joined Hosei University in 1982. He spent almost one year at Stuttgart University Germany 1988-1989 as an invited visiting researcher of Alexander Humboldt Foundatiion. He is now professor of Hosei University Tokyo, department of art and technology，he was president of Hosei University Research Institute, California. During 1998-2001, he was a visiting scholar of Stanford University and doing a joint project entitled “Sleep Smart Project.” He was Editor in Chief of Advanced Robotics, which was issued by Robotics Society in Japan and published by Brill Publisher in Holland. He was elected as fellow of IEEE in 2002. His research interests cover control theory, mechatronics systems, robotics and health care systems.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: Shaohua Tan “Qualitative modeling and analysis”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 14:00:01 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-12

“It has increasingly been realized that some of the key characteristics underlying real-world complex dynamical systems (such as economical, financial and ecological systems) can only been modelled and thus understood and predicted at qualitative level directly.However, lacking a coherent and arithmetically sound theoretical framework for modeling and analyzing such systems entirely at qualitative level has long been an obstacle to such a qualitative modeling endeavor. Our research work led to a novel qualitative theory that provides a solution to overcome this obstacle. We develop a ternary qualitative algebra and related arithmetic operations directly over a qualitative space and use this algebra as the basis to build a direct qualitative modeling approach with qualitative functions without falling back to quantitative details inherent in most existing approaches. One of the important results of our proposed modeling theory is that any qualitative system can be represented as a piecewise linear qualitative function. This result lays a theoretical foundation for piecewise linear qualitative function structure to serve as a normal form for representing arbitrary qualitative functions. This short lecture will provide a non-technical description of our qualitative modeling techniques and demonstrate its usefulness in modeling, thus analyzing, complex real-world systems such as financial and economical systems.”

Professor Shaohua Tan received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1987. He has been Professor in Center for Information Science, Peking University, for 13 years. He held various teaching and research positions in a number of countries prior to joining Peking University. His research interests include developing qualitative modeling techniques in modeling complex real-world systems and analysis of financial systems using AI techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZjyoo0Y1Js

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

ShanghAI Lectures: Koh Hosoda “Compliant Body as a Source of Intelligence”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 22:30:17 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-05

Animals and Humans utilize their compliance: muscular system and soft skin. The compliance plays an important role to exhibit intelligent behavior. To build an intelligent artificial agent, therefore, soft material is crucial. In the lecture, I will talk about several robots consisting of soft material for adaptive behavior. They are viewed from the design principles: cheap design, material property and redundancy.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVKUcgOc7Pg

Koh Hosoda received the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Kyoto University, Japan in 1993. From 1993 to 1997, he was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering for Computer-Controlled Machinery, Osaka University. From 1997 to 2010 he was an Associate Professor of the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University. From 2005 to 2010, he was a group leader of the JST Asada ERATO Project, as well. From Apr 2010, he has been a Professor of the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University. He stayed at AI laboratory, Zurich as a guest professor through Apr 1998 to Mar 1999.

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: SAYA/Hiroshi Kobayashi “Hello, my name is SAYA”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 01:00:02 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-05

In this guest lecture, SAYA, the robotic teacher from Japan, introduces herself and talks about the Tokyo University of Science, where she was constructed by Hiroshi Kobayashi.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2E8NUPmMUA

ShanghAI Lectures: Brian David Johnson “Brain Machines: Robots, Free Will and Science Fiction Prototypes”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 15:30:04 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-29

How can science fiction help prototype emerging science theory and experimentation? Expanding on the framework of consumer experience architecture, this talk explores how a fictional story, based specifically on current works of scientific research, can lead to the expansion and further experimentation of a dramatic new approach to artificial intelligence and domestic robots.

The talk will explore a novel and innovative methodology (science fiction prototyping) which facilitates the creation of new research opportunities and commercial products, based around the concept of integrating science fiction and fact within a regenerative prototyping cycle.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul3IVWAWTyk

The future is Brian David Johnson’s business. As a Consumer Experience Architect he develops future products for the Intel Corporation, a global microprocessor manufacturer. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as in science fiction novels (Fake Plastic Love, the forthcoming This is Planet Earth) and short stories. He has directed two feature films, and an illustrator and commissioned painter.

ShanghAI Lectures: Auke Ijspeert “Controlling the Locomotion of Robots Using Central Pattern Generator Models”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 13:50:05 +0000

Animal locomotion control is in a large part based on central pattern generators (CPGs), which are neural networks capable of producing complex rhythmic patterns while being activated and modulated by relatively simple control signals. These networks are located in the spinal cord for vertebrate animals. In this talk, I will present how mathematical models and robots can be used as tools to get a better understanding of the functioning of these circuits. In particular I will present how we model CPGs of lower vertebrates (lamprey and salamander) using systems of coupled oscillators, and how we test the CPG models on board of amphibious robots, such as a new salamander-like robot capable of swimming and walking. I will also show how the concept of CPGs implemented as coupled oscillators can be a useful control paradigm for various types of articulated robots from snake to humanoid robots.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFL2GxVBWC4

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-29

Auke Ijspeert is a SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation) professor at the EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne), and head of the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG). He has a BSc/MSc in Physics from the EPFL, and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL (LAMI), and at the University of Southern California (USC). Before returning to the EPFL, he was a research assistant professor at USC, and an external collaborator at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research institute) in Japan. He is still affiliated as adjunct faculty to both institutes. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and applied machine learning.

He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of the functioning of animals (in particular their fascinating sensorimotor coordination abilities), and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers (see for instance Ijspeert et al, Science, 315(5817):1416-1420, 2007). He is regularly invited to give talks on these topics. With his colleagues, he has received the Best Paper Award at ICRA2002, the Industrial Robot Highly Commended Award at CLAWAR2005, and the Best Paper Award at the IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2007 conference. He is associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, has acted as technical program chair of 5 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, LATSIS2006), and has been a program committee member of over 40 conferences.

ShanghAI Lectures: Bernard Horan “Mixing real and virtual worlds in education”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 13:40:28 +0000

Bernard Horan presents an overview of a trial undertaken at the University of Essex in the use of a mixed-reality teaching environment. The lecture includes a summary of the motivations for mixed reality teaching, its implementation using Project Wonderland and a summary of the results of the trial. From the 2009 ShanghAI Lecture series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GYsFINqWts

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-22

Bernard Horan works for Sun Microsystems Laboratories as a senior staff engineer. His current research uses Project Wonderland and includes: an investigation into the use of 3d recording and playback; and the utility of mixed reality teaching to bridge the gap between local and physically remote students. Bernard’s earlier published research includes the semantic web and wireless sensor networks. Bernard is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex, UK.

ShanghAI Lectures: Lutz Jäncke “On the neuropsychology of avatars”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 13:00:31 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-22

In my talk I will demonstrate why virtual reality (VR) is interesting for neuroscientists or cognitive neuroscientists. A major question in cognitive neuroscience is whether VR environments cause the same experience as real environments. If this is the case the brain states evoked by VR and real environments should be the same. In our experiments we have used several virtual scenarios to examine the influence of VR environments on brain activation and subjective experience. First, we have used virtual roller coaster experiments as stimuli in the context of fMRI experiments. These experiments have shown that typical brain areas are involved in processing this kind of VR scenario. Most interesting was the fact that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is strongly involved in controlling the subjective presence experience. While this area is involved in controlling the presence experience in adults it is not involved in kids. In kids, however, we uncovered stronger brain activations in emotional brain areas. Obviously kid cannot control their emotional reactions via the DLPFC as adults. This might have consequences how kids behave in VR environments. In a further set of experiments we are interested to learn how humans react in response to virtual persons (avatars) or how they interact with avatars suffering from pain (virtual experiment). Altogether these experiments demonstrate that human brain reacts to VR stimuli mostly similar as to real stimuli.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzb446u_00

Lutz Jäncke is professor for Neuropsychology at the University Zurich since 2002. His main research interests are focussed around the question how the human brain is shaped by experience. To understand the effects of leaning and experience on the human brain he uses modern brain imaging techniques like fMRI and EEG. However, he is also strongly grounded in cognitive psychology. One of his specialties is to use professional musicians as model for neuroplasticity. He has also a special interest in virtual reality because he is interested whether VR environments stimulate the same experiences in our brain as real environments. In addition, he is also interested to explore the possibilities of VR for neurological and neuropsychological rehabilitation.

ShanghAI Lectures: Weidong Chen “Modeling and control of mobile robotic networks”

Nathan Labhart — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 20:01:43 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-16

Swarm intelligence of mobile robots is defined as a mobile robot network with only local interactions and finite sensing capabilities which however could achieve global objectives and collective behaviors. The most well-known examples of swarm intelligence in nature are discovered in the collective behaviors of ant and bee colonies. Self-healing is one of the most important components in swarm intelligence.

In this talk, we will provide a theoretical modelling as well as a control method for self-healing of mobile robot networks based on motion synchronization. Using the graph and complex network theories, we establish the model of a mobile robot network that combines switched network topologies with an interaction dynamic model for describing the motion of the robots. We propose a performance metric of the network topology to evaluate the stability and the robustness of motion synchronization, analyze the effect of failed robots upon the network topology, and show the necessity and principle of the self-healing method based on only local interactions. A fully distributed and recursive topology control for self-healing with switched topologies is then proposed. We show that the self-healing algorithm can prevent the network topology from being separated into two or more disconnected parts, and maintain the performance of the network. Based on the Lyapunov exponent, we further provide a criterion of the stability of the network with the proposed distributed control. Finally, we demonstrate the advantages of our self-healing method by performing simulations of two typical tasks, formation generation and coverage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D3GLq997JQ

ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 10 “How the body shapes the way we think”

Nathan Labhart — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:00:17 +0000

This concludes the ShanghAI Lecture series of 2012. After a wrap-up of the class, we announce the winners of the EmbedIT and NAO competitions and end with an outlook of the future of the ShanghAI Lectures.

Then there are three guest lectures: Tamás Haidegger (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) on surgical robots, Aude Billard (EPFL) on how the body shapes the way we move (and how humans can shape the way robots move), and Jamie Paik (EPFL) on soft robotics.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Tamás Haidegger: Human Skills for Robots: Transferring Human Knowledge and Capabilities to Robotic Task Execution in Surgery

Almost 90 years ago, the idea of telesurgery was born, along with the initial concept of robots. From the early 1970s, researchers were focusing on robotic telepresence, to empower surgeons to treat patients at a distance. The first systems appeared over 20 years ago, and robotic surgery has quickly become a standard-of-care for certain procedures—at least in the USA. Over the decades, the control concept remained the same; a human surgeon guiding the robotic tools based on real-time sensory feedback. However, from the beginning of the development, the more exciting (and sometimes frightening) questions have been linked to machine learning, AI and automated surgery. In the true sense of automation, there have only been unclear reports of one single robotically planned and executed surgery so far, despite the fact that many research groups are working on the problem. This talk introduces the major efforts currently undertaken in centers of excellence around the globe to transfer the incredibly diverse and versatile human cognition into the domain of surgical robotics.

References

P. Kazanzides, G. Fichtinger, G. D. Hager, A. M. Okamura, L. L. Whitcomb, and R. H. Taylor, “Surgical and Interventional Robotics: part I,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 122–130, 2008.
G. Fichtinger , P. Kazanzides, G. D. Hager, A. M. Okamura, L. L. Whitcomb, and R. H. Taylor, “Surgical and Interventional Robotics: part II,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 94–102, 2008.
G. Hager, A. Okamura, P. Kazanzides, L. Whitcomb, G. Fichtinger, and R. Taylor, “Surgical and Interventional Robotics: part III,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 84–93, 2008.
C. E. Reiley, H. C. Lin, D. D. Yuh, G. D. Hager. “A Review of Methods for Objective Surgical Skill Evaluation,” Surgical Endoscopy, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 356–366, 2011.

Aude Billard: How the body shapes the way we move and how humans can shape the way robots move

In this lecture Aude Billard advocates that it is advantageous to have robots move with a dynamics that resembles the dynamics of motion of natural bodies, even if the robots do not resemble humans in their physical appearance (e.g. industrial robots). This will make their motion more predictable for humans and hence make the interaction safer. She then briefly presents current approaches to modeling the dynamics of human motion in robots.

A survey of issues on robot learning from human demonstration can be found at:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Robot_learning_by_demonstration

Jamie Paik: SOFT Robot Challenge and  Robogamis

ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 9 “Ontogenetic development”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:00:29 +0000

In the 9th part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, we look at ontogenetic development as Rolf Pfeifer talks about the path from locomotion to cognition. This is followed by two guest lectures: The first one by Ning Lan (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China) on cortico-muscular communication in the nervous system, the second by Roland Siegwart (ETH Zurich) on the design and navigation of robots with various moving abilities.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Ning Lan: Cortico-Muscular Communication of Movement Information by Central Regulation of Spindle Sensitivity

Ning Lan is Professor at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. He tells us about cortico-muscular communication in the nervous system.

Roland Siegwart: Design and Navigation of Wheeled, Running, Swimming and Flying Robots

Roland Siegwart is professor at ETH Zurich and the director of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory.

Robots are rapidly evolving from factory work-horses, which are physically bound to their work-cells, to increasingly complex machines capable of performing challenging tasks as search and rescuing, surveillance and inspections, planetary exploration or autonomous transportation of goods. This requires robots to operate in unstructured and unpredictable environments and various terrains. This talk will focus on design and navigation aspects of wheeled, legged, swimming and aerial robots operating in complex environments.

Siegwart presents wheeled inspection robots designed to crawl into machines and take various measurement, quadruped walkers that exploit natural dynamics and serial elastic actuation, swimming robots and autonomous micro-helicopters used to inspect cluttered, GPS denied cities or narrow indoor environments. He also presents a small fixed-wing airplane capable of staying in the air indefinitely due to its solar powered generator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jZtOlIrxjY

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 8 “Where is human memory?”

Nathan Labhart — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:00:24 +0000

In this 8th part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, Rolf Pfeifer looks into differences between human and computer memory and shows several types of “memories”. In the first guest lecture, Vera Zabotkina (Russian State University for the Humanities) talks about cognitive modeling in linguistics; in the second guest lecture, José del R. Millán (EPFL) demonstrates a brain-computer interface.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Vera Zabotkina: Cognitive modeling in linguistics: conceptual metaphors

The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor… (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)

In this lecture, Vera addresses the integration challenge facing cognitive science as an interdisciplinary endeavor. She highlights the interconnection between AI and Linguistics and discusses conceptual metaphors.

José del Millán: Brain-Computer Interfacing
In this lecture, José del R. Millán (EPFL) demonstrates the use of human brain signals to control devices, such as wheelchairs, and interact with our environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z6HRD9KAnY

Related links:

Slides (4.06 MB)
ShanghAI Lectures website
Book: How the Body Shapes the Way We Think
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Cliff Goddard, Semantic Analysis. A practical Introduction. Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2011.
James Pustejovsky. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1995.

ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 7 “Collective Intelligence: Cognition from interaction”

Nathan Labhart — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 08:00:11 +0000

In the 7th part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, Rolf Pfeifer talks about collective intelligence. Examples include ants that find the shortest path to a food source, robots that clean up, and birds that form flocks. In the guest lecture, István Harmati (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary) discusses the coordination of multi-agent robotic systems.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

István Harmati: Coordination of Multi-Agent Robotic Systems

Control and coordination of multi-agent autonomous systems plays an increasing role in robotics. Such systems are used in a variety of applications including finding and moving objects, search and rescue, target tracking, target assignments, optimal military maneuvers, formation control, traffic control and robotic games (soccer, hockey). Control and coordination are often implemented at different levels. On the highest level, robot teams are given a global task to perform (e.g attacking in robot soccer). Since it is hard to find and optimal solution to such global challenges, the methods presented are based mainly on heuristics and artificial intelligence (fuzzy systems, value rules, etc). On the middle level, the individual robots are given tactics to reach a global goal. Examples include kicking the ball to the goal or occupying a strategic position in the field. On the lowest level, the robot is controlled to perform the desired behavior (specified by the strategy and the tactics). Finally, we also show the main issues and the general ideas related to the efficient coordination of multi-agent systems.

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 6 “Evolution: Cognition from scratch”

Nathan Labhart — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 08:00:05 +0000

In this sixth part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, Rolf Pfeifer introduces the topic “Artificial Evolution” and gives examples of evolutionary processes in artificial intelligence. The first guest lecture, by Francesco Mondada (EPFL) is about the use of robots in daily life; in the second guest lecture, Robert Riener (ETH Zürich) talks about rehabilitation robots.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Francesco Mondada: Toward Robots For Daily Life

In a recent survey from the European Commission, 60% of the participants said that robots should be banned from the application area “care of children, elderly, and the disabled”, 34% would like to ban robots from “education”. Within this framework, what is the future of robotics in daily life services? Two research projects answering this question are presented in this talk: education using specific robotics tools and a new form of embodiment for service robotics. Some preliminary results are illustrated, showing a very interesting potential demonstrated by a high acceptance of the proposed approaches.

Robert Riener: Design Principles for Intelligent Rehabilitation Robots

Integrating the human into a robotic rehabilitation system can be challenging not only from a biomechanical view but also with regard to psycho-physiological aspects. Biomechanical integration involves ensuring that the system to be used is ergonomically acceptable and “user-cooperative”. Psycho-physiological integration involves recording and controlling the patient’s physiological reactions so that the patient receives appropriate stimuli and is challenged in a moderate but engaging way. In this talk basic design criteria are presented that should be taken into account, when developing and applying an intelligent robotic system that is in close interaction with the human subject. One must carefully take into account the constraints given by human biomechanical, physiological and psychological functions in order to optimize device function without causing undue stress or harm to the human user.

References:

Robert Riener, Lars Lünenburger, Gery Colombo: Human-centered robotics applied to gait training and assessment, Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 43(5), August/September 2006, p. 679-694.
Alexander Koenig, Ximena Omlin, Lukas Zimmerli, Mark Sapa, Carmen Krewer, Marc Bolliger, Friedemann Müller, Robert Riener:Psychological state estimation from physiological recordings during robot-assisted gait rehabilitation, Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 48(4), accepted for publication, 2011
Robert Riener: What Has to Be Known about Human Physiology to Develop Wearable Robots? Workshop on Wearable Robotics, IEEE ICRA 2012, St. Paul, USA

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 5 “Design principles for intelligent systems (part 2)”

Nathan Labhart — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:00:38 +0000

This is the second part of the “Design Principles for Intelligent Systems” ShanghAI Lecture. After Rolf Pfeifer’s class, Barry Trimmer (Tufts University, USA) gives a guest presentation about soft robotics.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Barry Trimmer: Living Machines: Soft Animals, Soft Robots and Biohybrids

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 4 “Design principles for intelligent systems (part 1)”

Nathan Labhart — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:00:31 +0000

This is the fourth part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, where Rolf Pfeifer starts introducing a set of “Design Principles” for intelligent systems, as outlined in the book “How the Body Shapes the Way We Think”.

In the first guest lecture, Dario Floreano (EPFL) talks about biologically inspired flying robots, and then Pascal Kaufmann (AI Lab, UZH) gives a short overview of the “Roboy” project.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Dario Floreano: Bio-inspired Flying Robots
Most autonomous robots operate on the ground, essentially living in 2 dimensions. Taking robots into the 3rd dimension offers new opportunities, such as performing exploration of rough terrain with small and inexpensive devices and gathering aerial information for monitoring, security, search-for-rescue, and mitigation of catastrophic events.

However, there are several novel scientific and technological challenges in perception, control, materials, and morphologies that need to be addressed. In this talk, Dario Floreano presents the long-term vision, approach, and results obtained so far to let robots live in the 3rd dimension. Taking inspiration from nature, he starts by describing how robots could take off the ground by jumping and gliding. He then moves on to autonomous flight in cluttered environments and on the issue of perception and control for small flying systems in indoor environments. This will lead to the next step resulting in outdoor flying robots that can autonomously regulate altitude, steering, and landing using only perceptual cues. He then expands the perspective by describing how multiple robots could fly in swarm formation in outdoor environments and how these achievements could possibly lead to fleets of personal aerial vehicles in the not-so-far future. Finally, he closes the talk by going back indoor with current work on radically new concepts of flying robots that collaborate with teams of terrestrial and climbing robots and of flying robots designed to survive and even exploit collisions. Throughout the talk, Dario Floreano also emphasize bi-directional links between biology as a source of inspiration and robotics as a novel method to explore biological questions.

J.-C. Zufferey, A. Beyeler and D. Floreano. Autonomous flight at low altitude using light sensors and little computational power, in International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, vol. 2, num. 2, p. 107-117, 2010.
M. Kovac, M. Schlegel, J.-C. Zufferey and D. Floreano. Steerable Miniature Jumping Robot, in Autonomous Robots, vol. 28, num. 3, p. 295-306, 2010.
S. Hauert, J.-C. Zufferey and D. Floreano. Evolved swarming without positioning information: an application in aerial communication relay, in Autonomous Robots, vol. 26, num. 1, p. 21-32, 2009.

Pascal Kaufmann: Roboy

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 3 “Towards a theory of intelligence”

Nathan Labhart — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 08:00:49 +0000

In this lecture Rolf Pfeifer presents some first steps toward a “theory of intelligence”., followed by guest lectures by Vincent C. Müller (Anatolia College, Greece) on computers and cognition, and Alex Waibel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany/Carnegie Mellon University, USA) who demonstrates a live lecture translation system.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Vincent C Müller: Computers Can Do Almost Nothing – Except Cognition (Perhaps)

The basic idea of classical cognitive science and classical AI is that if the brain is a computer then we could just reproduce brain function on different hardware. The assumption that this function (cognition) is computing has been much criticized; I propose to assume it is true and to see what would follow.

Let us take it as definitional that computing is ‘multiply realizable’: Strictly the same computing procedure can be realized on different hardware. (This is true if computing is understood as digital algorithmic procedures, in the sense of Church and Turing.) But in multiple realizations only the syntactic computational properties are retained from one realization to the other, while the physical and semantic properties may or may not be. So, even if the brain is indeed a computer, realizing it in different hardware might not have the desired effects because the hardware-dependent effects are not computational: Just computing can’t even switch on a red light; a computer model of an apple tree will not produce apples. But perhaps cognition is different. Is cognition one the properties that are retained in different realizations?

References:

Sandberg, Anders (2013), ‘Feasibility of whole brain emulation’, in Vincent C. Müller (ed.), Theory and Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (SAPERE; Berlin: Springer), 251-64.
Searle, John R. (1980), ‘Minds, brains and programs’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 417-57.

Alex Waibel: Bridging the Language Divide

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 2 “Cognition as computation”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:00:22 +0000

In this 2nd part of the ShanghAI Lectures, Rolf Pfeifer looks at the paradigm “Cognition as Computation”, show its successes and failures and justifies the need for an embodied perspective. Following Rolf Pfeifer’s class, there are two guest lectures by Christopher Lueg (University of Tasmania) on embodiment and information behavior and Davide Scaramuzza (AI Lab, University of Zurich) on autonomous flying robots.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a video conference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Christopher Lueg: Embodiment and Scaffolding Perspectives in Human Computer Interaction

Davide Scaramuzza: Vision-Based Navigation: a Ground and a Flying Robot Perspective

Over the past two decades, we have assisted to a rapid research progress in driver-assistance systems. Some of these systems have even reached the market and have become nowadays an essential tool for driving. GPS navigation systems are probably the most popular ones. They have revolutionized the way of traveling and certainly facilitated research towards fully autonomous navigation in outdoor environments. However, there are still numerous challenges that have to be solved in view of fully autonomous navigation of cars in cluttered environments. This is especially true in urban environments, where the requirements for an autonomous system are very high.

Another research area that lately received a lot of interest—especially after the earthquake in Fukushima, Japan—is that of micro aerial vehicles. Flying robots have numerous advantages over ground vehicles: they can get access to environments where humans cannot get access to and, furthermore, they have much more agility than any other ground vehicle. Unfortunately, their dynamics makes them extremely difficult to control and this is particularly true in GPS-denied environments.

In this talk, Davide Scaramuzza will present challenges and results for both ground vehicles and flying robots, from localization in GPS-denied environments to motion estimation. He will show several experiments and real-world applications where these systems perform successfully and those where their applications is still limited by the current technology.

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ShanghAI Lectures 2012: Lecture 1 “Intelligence – An eternal conundrum”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 08:00:48 +0000

In this first part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, Rolf Pfeifer gives an overview of the content and scope of the project, discusses the meaning of “Intelligence”, the Turing Test, and IQ.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world. The name goes back to the first lectures of the series in 2009, which were held from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

The lectures roughly follow Rolf Pfeifer’s book “How the Body Shapes the Way We Think” (co-authored with Josh Bongard). Additional information, including information on publications and the series’ sponsors can be found at the ShanghAI Lectures website, which also provided a support framework to bring together students and researchers in an interactive setting during the semester.

Starting with this post, recordings of these lectures and guest presentations given as part of the ShanghAI Lectures are now made available on Robohub.

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