Keynote Speakers Original

Prof. Tony Belpaeme

Talk: Learning from Social Robots
Social robots are robots which manipulate the social world, rather than the physical world of traditional robotics. They are designed to tap into our desire for social interaction. Because social interaction comes naturally to all of us, there is a misconception that building artificial social interaction is easy. This talk will argue that social robotics is on the one hand one of the hardest challenges in robotics but will at same time show that relatively simple designs and behaviours can go a long way in achieving social human-robot interaction. To illustrate the power of social robots, the talk will give examples of social robots being used in education, therapy and entertainment.

Prof. Oliver Bendel

Website: http://oliverbendel.net

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Talk: Basics of Machine Ethics
Machine ethics is a young discipline that deals with machine morality or artificial morality, just as artificial intelligence (AI) deals with artificial intelligence. The carriers of machine morality can be called moral machines. One can think about these in machine ethics, and one can create them out of discipline, cooperating with AI and robotics. We “moralize” certain robots, drones and chatbots. So, they become artificial moral agents. In his talk at the international workshop “Embracing AI”, Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (FHNW School of Business) will outline the basics of machine ethics. He will discuss different approaches and goals within this discipline. He then presents some well-known artefacts of machine ethics, including moral machines implemented by Michael and Susan L. Anderson, Ronald C. Arkin, and himself.

Prof. Angelo Cangelosi

Website: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/angelo.cangelosi.html

Talk: Developmental Robotics for Language Learning, Trust and Theory of Mind
Growing theoretical and experimental research on action and language processing and on number learning and gestures clearly demonstrates the role of embodiment in cognition and language processing. In psychology and neuroscience, this evidence constitutes the basis of embodied cognition, also known as grounded cognition (Pezzulo et al. 2012; Borghi & Cangelosi 2014). In robotics, these studies have important implications for the design of linguistic capabilities in cognitive agents and robots for human-robot communication, and have led to the new interdisciplinary approach of Developmental Robotics (Cangelosi & Schlesinger 2015). During the talk we will present examples of developmental robotics models and experimental results from iCub experiments on the embodiment biases in early word acquisition and grammar learning (Morse et al. 2015; Morse & Cangelosi 2017) and experiments on pointing gestures and finger counting for number learning (De La Cruz et al. 2014). We will then present a novel developmental robotics model, and experiments, on Theory of Mind and its use for autonomous trust behavior in robots (Vinanzi et al. 2019). The implications for the use of such embodied approaches for embodied cognition in AI and cognitive sciences, and for robot companion applications will also be discussed.

Dr. Gabriella Cortellessa, Prof. Amedeo Cesta & Dr. Francesca Fracasso

Website: https://www.istc.cnr.it/people/gabriella-cortellessa/

Talk: AI & Robotics for Healthcare and Active Aging: Motivational, Emotional and Practical Challenges
This talk will describe applications of AI and robotics for the healthcare and active ageing domain. After an introduction of our research experiences, it will dwell on the description of an enhanced telepresence robot (ROBIN), part of a telecare system for monitoring older adults at home. Guided fielded experiments, the technology was improved to ensure a more usable fruition of additional health-related services delivered both during a virtual visit of a caregiver (e.g., sharing of health-related information/advices) and asynchronously by a proactive initiative of the robot (reminders, health-related suggestions). Results of a psycho-physiological assessment show that users positively evaluate the system in terms of usability, workload, and emotional impact. The talk will end by showing our current work on the development of AI and robotics system to support active ageing and healthcare underscoring the emotional, motivational and practical challenges to be faced for a deployment into the socio-health system.

Dr. Kate Devlin

Website: https://www.drkatedevlin.com

Talk: Technology and Intimacy

The extensive media hype around the sex robot is far removed from the reality. There are, as yet, no commercially available sex robots in the world today, although prototypes are in development. The virtual girlfriend (for they are almost all gendered as women) exists in other forms such as chatbots and as holograms – physically disembodied but eternally available. This talk explores the idea of the artificial lover and what it stands for. Conversations with potential buyers reveal a market that craves intimacy ahead of sex, which raises the question of how human-machine attachment might be something to explicitly design for rather than evade.

Prof. Verena Hafner

Website: https://adapt.informatik.hu-berlin.de/vvh/index.html

Talk: Robots with a Self

Developing Robots with a Self can give insights into processes of self-construction in humans as well as into principles of learning and development in robotics. It can also allow for a more intuitive human-robot interaction in social robotics. In this talk, I will discuss the prerequisites for developing an artificial minimal self, namely a sense of agency and a sense of body ownership. This will be demonstrated with examples of computational models for sensorimotor prediction and robotics experiments.

Dr. Nicolas Spatola

Website: https://nicolas-spatola.webnode.fr

Talk: The Impact of Anthropomorphized Robots on Human Socio-cognitive Processes
In the future our social environment could be populated by new artificial beings: robots. Even if interest in robotics is increasingly present, paradoxically the perception of these new agents and the impact of their presence on our society remains little studied. In this talk, through a multidisciplinary approach, we propose to unfold the processes underlying the perception of robots through the concept of anthropomorphism, i. e. the attribution of human characteristics to a non-human. We thus propose to identify the determinants that can act as a modulator of this perception through the factors motivating and inhibiting anthropomorphism. Finally, we develop the perception of robots and the attribution of human characteristics through the experience of social interaction with these new artificial agents. With the rise of robotics today, and in particular social robotics, it seems necessary to question the perception of robots as valid social agents and the evolution of the perceived distance between robots and humans, introducing a new conceptualization of these future artificial social agents.

Dr. Jessica Szczuka

Website: https://www.uni-due.de/sozialpsychologie/szczuka.shtml

Talk: What do Men and Women see in Sex Robots? Empirical Evidences on the Visual Perception of Sexualized Robots and their Potential to evoke Jealousy in Women
What do we see when we look at a sexualized robot? The presentation will focus on first empirical results on the visual perception of sexualized robots but will also share some insights on whether women do perceive sexualized robots as a potential threat to an existing romantic relationship and their own self-concept. Both aspects, the visual perception but also the social perception are crucial in order to understand the role sexualized robots may have in our society. Moreover, the role of the human-likeness of sex robots will be discussed.

Prof. Agnieszka Wykowska

Website: https://www.iit.it/people/agnieszka-wykowska

Talk: Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction

In daily lives, we need to be able to efficiently navigate through our social environment. Our brain has developed a plethora of mechanisms that allow smooth social interactions with others, and that enable understanding of others’ behaviors, and prediction of what others are going to do next. At the dawn of a new era, in which robots might soon be among us at homes and offices, one needs to ask whether (or when) our brain uses similar mechanisms towards robots. In our research, we examine what factors in human-robot interaction lead to activation of mechanisms of social cognition and to interpreting the intentionality in our artificial interaction partners. We use methods of cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology in naturalistic protocols in which humans interact with the humanoid robot iCub. Here, I will present results of several experiments in which we examined the impact of various parameters of robot social behavior on the mechanisms of social cognition. We examined whether mutual gaze, gaze-contingent robot behavior, or human-likeness of movements influence social attunement. Our results show an interesting interaction between more “social” aspects of robot behavior and fundamental processes of human cognition. The results will be discussed in the context of several general questions that need to be addressed: the societal impact of robots towards whom we attune socially or clinical applications of social robots.