Abstract:
Robotics is enjoying a surge in interest, in part driven by the rapidly emerging developments in AI in the past decade. Beyond the research interest, what are autonomous robots really good for? I will try to make a case for assistive autonomy, and argue that such a human-centred perspective raises some new questions for AI.
In this talk, I'll describe results from a few recent projects addressing learning and adaptive decision making in human-robot interaction contexts, ranging from surgical skills to autonomous driving. This will motivate a few thematic questions, that form the focus of a new centre to be established as part of my UKRI Turing AI WLR Fellowship.
Bio:
Subramanian Ramamoorthy is a Professor of Robot Learning and Autonomy in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also Director of the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour, and Director of the UKRI AI CDT in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics. He holds a UKRI Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowship (2024 - 29).
His research focus is on robotics and machine learning, with particular emphasis on achieving safe and robust autonomy in human-centred environments. This work has attracted funding from a variety of sources including UKRI, EU, DARPA, DSTL and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and been recognised with best paper awards at international conferences including ICRA, IROS, CoRL, ICDL and EACL.
In addition to his academic role, he has been involved in Five AI, a UK based technology company developing autonomous vehicles technology, as Vice President - Prediction and Planning (2017 - 2020) and Scientific Advisor (2021-23). Five AI was acquired by Bosch GmbH in 2022.
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