AI Colloquium: Maja Mataric on "Robots That Care"

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Robot-assistent met informatiescherm © iStockphoto.com/ VTT Studio
Robot assistant with information display © iStockphoto.com/ VTT Studio

Utrecht University’s AI Colloquium will this year be organized by the focus area Human-centered Artificial Intelligence. For this AI Colloquium, SIG-coordinator Natasha Alechina has invited Maja Mataric, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics; pioneer of socially assistive robotics and founder and director of the Interaction Lab at the University of Southern California. The title of her talk is: "Robots That Care: Socially Assistive Robotics and the Future of Work and Care".

Robots that Care

The nexus of advances in robotics, NLU, and machine learning has created opportunities for personalized robots for the ultimate robotics frontier: the home. The current pandemic has both caused and exposed unprecedented levels of health & wellness, education, and training needs worldwide, which must increasingly be addressed in the home. Socially assistive robotics has the potential to address those and longer-standing care needs through personalized and affordable in-home support.

This talk will discuss human-robot interaction methods for socially assistive robotics that utilize multi-modal interaction data and expressive and persuasive robot behavior to monitor, coach, and motivate users to engage in health, wellness, education  and training activities. Methods and results will be presented that include modeling, learning, and personalizing user motivation, engagement, and coaching of healthy children and adults, stroke patients, Alzheimer's patients, and children with autism spectrum disorders, in short and long-term (month+) deployments in schools, therapy centers, and homes. Research and commercial implications and pathways will be discussed.

About Maja Mataric

Maja Matarić is Chan Soon-Shiong Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at USC, founding director of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center and interim Vice President of Research. Her PhD and MS are from MIT, BS from the University of Kansas. She is Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, AAAI, and ACM, recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring from President Obama, Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision, NSF Career, MIT TR35 Innovation, and IEEE RAS Early Career Awards. She is active in K-12 and diversity outreach. A pioneer of socially assistive robotics, her lab’s research is developing personalized human-robot interaction methods for convalescence, rehabilitation, training, and education that have been validated in autism, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other domains.  She is also co-founder of Embodied, Inc.

Maja Mataric is motivated by the vast need for improving the human condition, and the equally vast potential for affordable human-centered technologies, such as socially assistive robotics (SAR), as means of empowering people and improving human quality of life. As a pioneer of SAR and founder and director of the Interaction Lab at the University of Southern California, her research is aimed at endowing machines with the ability to help people, especially those with special needs. Her lab's focus is on developing technologies that help people help themselves, using technology to augmentat human ability rather than to automate human work. She is passionate about conveying the importance and promise of interdisciplinary research and careers in STEM to all, with a particular focus on K-12 students and teachers, women and other underrepresented groups in engineering, the media, and policy makers.

Human-centered Artificial Intelligence

The AI Colloquium is organized within Utrecht University focus area Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). HAI bundles the various AI-activities undertaken at Utrecht University. AI in Utrecht has a unique interdisciplinary profile that pervades various departments, including computer sciencephilosophylinguistics and psychology.

Start date and time
End date and time
Location
Online in the Human-centered Artificial Intelligence Team
Registration

All interested parties are welcome to attend, registration is not necessary. The colloquium will take place in the Human-centered Artificial Intelligence Team in MS Teams. If you have trouble finding or accessing the Team, please contact as via hai@uu.nl to be added to the team.