Life & Robotics: Live Streamed Panel Discussion

Understanding Humanity to Inspire Robots Designed to Assist Humans
October 25, 2017 from 13:30 to 16:00 CET

Knowledge – Design – Interaction – Impact

As Robots become increasingly mobile, versatile and autonomous, they are being asked to take on ever more complex tasks, in every environment imaginable whilst negotiating a plethora of physical, intellectual and social obstacles.

New Content ItemMuch of their development is being driven by understanding the skills and strategies that humans, animals and plants employ. This not only inspires robot design and control from nano to macro scales but is also accelerating our understanding of life and the potential for robots to interact with humans and augment our abilities.


Join the Springer Nature Life & Robotics Live Panel Discussion

The Springer Nature Life & Robotics Live Panel Discussion will be the culmination of two and a half days of presentations and workshops including 25 of the world’s leading Roboticists from academia and industry. On the topics of Robotics and AI, Springer’s book program provides access to the world’s largest collection of proceedings, monographs, textbooks and reference works. Key series and titles include the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and the Springer Handbook of Robotics. In addition both Springer and Nature journals are continuing to expand and evolve to meet the demand for high quality journal publications on the topics of Robotics and AI.
Based on the symposium, Nature will publish a special outlook supplement to be published with an issue of Nature in 2018.

The presentations and workshops are sponsored by KUKA and Queensland University of Technology and are hosted by Springer Nature.

The panel discussion will summarise the results of the meetings and will focus on:

  • Development and Design of Life Inspired Robotics
  • Human – Robot Interaction/Augmentation
  • Technology Transfer and Role of Industry
  • Future Trends and Impacts

Our partners

KUKA

KUKA

Queensland University of Technology

Queensland University of Technology

Panel 1 – Life & Robotics Team Leaders discuss the key results of the workshops

13:30 to 14:20 CET

Panelists

  • Prof. Aude Billard (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
  • Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy (University of California Berkeley)           
  • Prof. Ken  Goldberg (UC Berkeley)
  • Prof. Yoshihiko Nakamura (University of Tokyo)
  • Prof. Bruno Siciliano (University of Naples Federico II)
  • Prof. Oussama Khatib (Stanford University)

Moderator: Dr. Chris Bendall (Springer Nature) 

Panel 2 – Industry Experts Discuss Technology Transfer, Role of Industry and Future Trends and Impacts

14:30 to 16:00 CET

Panelists

  • Prof. Bruno Siciliano (University of Naples Federico II)
  • Prof. Oussama Khatib (Stanford University)
  • Prof. Torsten Kröger (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
  • Dr. Rainer Bischoff (KUKA)
  • Dr. Jonathan Loh (University of Kent)
  • Philippe Lorenz (Stiftung Neue Verantwortung)

Moderator: Dr. Chris Bendall (Springer Nature) 

About the panelists

Bruno Siciliano

Bruno Siciliano

Professor of Control and Robotics

University of Naples Federico II

Bruno Siciliano received his Doctorate degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Naples, Italy, in 1987. His research focuses on force and visual control, cooperative robots, human–robot interaction, aerial and surgical robotics. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME and IFAC. He is Co-Editor of the "Springer Handbook of Robotics", which received the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics and was also the winner in the category Engineering & Technology. Bruno Siciliano is the Past-President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and is currently a Board Director of the European Robotics Association. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation and the IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award.

Oussama Khatib

Oussama Khatib

Professor of Computer Science

Stanford University

Oussama Khatib received his Doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from Sup’Aero, Toulouse, France, in 1980. His research focuses on human-centered robotics including humanoid control architectures, human motion synthesis, interactive dynamic simulation, haptics, and human-friendly robot design. He is a Fellow of IEEE. He is Co-Editor of the "Springer Handbook of Robotics", which received the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics and was also the winner in the category Engineering & Technology. Oussama Khatib is the President of the International Foundation of Robotics Research. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the IEEE Robotics & Automation Technical Field Award, the IEEE RAS Pioneer Award in Robotics and Automation, the IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation, the IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award, and the Japan Robot Association (JARA) Award in Research and Development.

Torsten Kröger

Torsten Kröger

Director of the Institut for Anthropomatik and Robotik (IAR)

Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology

Torsten Kröger was previously a roboticist at Google and continues to be visiting researcher at Stanford University. He received his Doctorate degree from the  Robotics Research Institute at TU Braunschweig, Computer Science in 2009. In 2010, he joined the Stanford AI Laboratory, where he worked on instantaneous trajectory generation, autonomous hybrid switched-control of robots, and distributed real-time hard- and software systems. He was the founder of Reflexxes GmbH, a spin-off of TU Braunschweig working on the development of deterministic real-time-motion generation algorithms. In 2014, Reflexxes joined Google. Torsten Kröger is editor and associate editor of multiple IEEE conference proceedings, books, and book series. He received the IEEE RAS Early Career Award, the Heinrich Büssing Award, the GFFT Award, two fellowships of the German Research Association, and he was a finalist of the IEEE/IFR IERA Award and the euRobotics TechTransfer Award.

 

Ruzena Bajcsy

Ruzena Bajcsy

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Director Emeritus of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Science (CITRIS)

University of California, Berkeley

Prior to joining Berkeley, she headed the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Bajcsy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine as well as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 2001, she received the ACM/Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Allen Newell Award, and was named as one of the 50 most important women in science in the November 2002 issue of Discover Magazine. She is the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Computer and Cognitive Sciences (2009) and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award (2013) for her contributions in the field of robotics and automation.

Rainer Bischoff

Rainer Bischoff

Head of Corporate Research

KUKA

Dr. Bischoff is Head of KUKA’s Corporate Research department responsible for research and technology development preceding product development. Dr. Bischoff received his “Doktor- Ingenieur“ degree from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for his contributions towards the development of personal robots. He serves as Vice-President Industry of euRobotics AISBL – the European Robotics Association, he helped to create to unite European roboticists and to engage in a public-private partnership with the European Commission. In 2006, Dr. Bischoff received the IEEE/IFR Invention and Entrepreneurship Award for a flexible and scalable collision avoidance system for industrial robots. For leadership and outstanding contributions to the cooperation of academia and industry, and for managing and promoting significant technology transfer in the area of industrial and service robotics he was granted the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award in 2012. In 2015, he received the IROS Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award for his technical contributions to the personal robotic assistant HERMES and his effort in uniting the European Robotics Community. Dr. Bischoff has authored over 100 papers, receiving three best paper awards.

Ken Goldberg

Ken Goldberg

Professor and Department Chair, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

UC Berkeley

Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, and UC Berkeley Professor. He is Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department, with secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice, the School of Information, and Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School. Ken is Director of the CITRIS "People and Robots" Initiative and the UC Berkeley AUTOLAB where he and his students pursue research in geometric algorithms and machine learning for robotics and automation in surgery, manufacturing, and other applications. Ken developed the first provably complete algorithms for part feeding and part fixturing and the first robot on the Internet. Despite agonizingly slow progress, Ken persists in trying to make robots less clumsy. He has over 250 peer-reviewed publications and 8 U.S. Patents. He co-founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Ken's artwork has appeared in 70 exhibits including the Whitney Biennial and films he has co-written have been selected for Sundance and nominated for an Emmy Award. Ken was awarded the NSF PECASE (Presidential Faculty Fellowship) from President Bill Clinton in 1995, elected IEEE Fellow in 2005 and selected by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for the George Saridis Leadership Award in 2016.

Aude Billard

Aude Billard

Professor of the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL

Aude’s research interests span the control and design of robotic systems meant to interact with humans. To this goal, she pursues research in three complementary areas: a) the development of control systems for teaching robots through human demonstration; b) the study of the neural and cognitive processes underpinning imitation learning in humans; c) the design of user-friendly human-computer interfaces to facilitate human-robot interaction. Additionally, she conducts research on societal aspects of the use of robotics with application to diagnosis and therapy of children with autism. Her competences are in robot control, signal processing and machine learning.

Yoshihiko Nakamura

Yoshihiko Nakamura

Professor at the Department of Mechano-Informatics

University of Tokyo

Humanoid robotics, cognitive robotics, neuro musculoskeletal human modeling, biomedical systems, and their computational algorithms are Yoshihiko Nakamura's current fields of research. He is a Fellow of the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers, Fellow of Robotics Society of Japan, Fellow of IEEE, and Fellow of World Academy of Arts and Science. Currently, Dr. Nakamura (2012-2015) serves as President of International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM). Dr. Nakamura is Foreign Member of Academy of Engineering Science of Serbia and Montenegro, and TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor of Technische Universität München.

Jonathan Loh

Jonathan Loh

Graduated with a B.Sc. in Biology from University of Sussex, M.Sc. in Environmental Technology (Ecological Management) from Imperial College, London, and Ph.D. in Ethnobiology from University of Kent. Jonathan works on measuring and monitoring the state of global biological and cultural diversity and develop quantitative indicators of their trends. He also works as a consultant for international conservation organizations such as the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Philippe Lorenz

Philippe Lorenz

Philippe Lorenz analyzes the evolution of the German labor market under the influence of rapid technological change. He was part of the foresight lab ‘Toward the Labor Market 4.0?’, a joint research project between the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung and the Bertelsmann Stiftung, which assessed the potential impacts of digitization on labor and employment in Germany until 2030. In addition to his work on labor politics, he examines the impact of digital technologies on the German energy revolution (Energiewende). Philippe studied law at the University of Passau and International Relations at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences in Kleve.

About our partners


KUKA

New Content ItemKUKA is a global automation corporation with sales of around 3 billion euro and around 13,200 employees. As leading global supplier of intelligent automation solutions KUKA offers its customers in the automotive, electronics, consumer goods, metalworking, logistics/e-commerce, healthcare and service robotics industries everything they need from a single source: from components and cells to fully automated systems. The KUKA Group is headquartered in Augsburg.

 

Queensland University of Technology  (QUT)

New Content ItemQUT researchers are creating a new generation of intelligent systems that can see and understand real-world environments.

The development of robots that can see will revolutionise industries including manufacturing, agriculture and construction. The widespread implementation of visually-enabled intelligent systems will transform economies. QUT is developing robots that perceive their environment: that sense, understand, learn and improve performance. Robots that can see and respond as humans do. For example, COTSbot is an underwater robot that through its on-board vision system can navigate the Great Barrier Reef, identify crown of thorns starfish and successfully inject the pest with a lethal dose of bile salts. The Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, headquartered at QUT, hosts transdisciplinary international teams who apply robotics in the real world.

This has resulted in the development of an agricultural robot that can see the difference between weeds and crops and apply the correct herbicide appropriately, as well as a robot that can pick the right fruit, the right way, day and night.

Our researchers are developing a new class of medical robotics that can see soft tissue, to make keyhole surgeries simpler, safer and cheaper. More than 30,000 students from 100 countries are participating in our free global university-level course in robotic vision.

About Springer Nature

Springer Nature advances discovery by publishing robust and insightful research, supporting the development of new areas of knowledge, making ideas and information accessible around the world, and leading the way on open access. Key to this is our ability to provide the best possible service to the whole research community: helping authors to share their discoveries; enabling researchers to find, access and understand the work of others; supporting librarians and institutions with innovations in technology and data; and providing quality publishing support to societies.

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For more information, please visit springernature.com and @SpringerNature.