SoAIR2019

SoAIR2019 is a week-long technical education program (spring school) to be held shortly after the Human Robot Interaction (HRI) conference. The school will be held from 17-March-2019 to 24-March-2019 in Shonan Village Center, which is one of the most beautiful villages in Japan. This event is organized by generous support of JST-CREST through the project Symbol Emergence in Robotics for Future Human-Machine Collaboration.

Introduction

Autonomous and intelligent systems are progressively moving into spaces, which have previously been predominantly shaped by human agency. Unlike in the past where machines obediently served their human operators, machines now increasingly act without the intervention of a human. Artificial intelligence is meeting new challenges in the world, though human-like intelligence may still be a distant goal. Robots in factories are coming out of their cages. Autonomous cars are being tested on streets with regular human-driven cars. The private household is changing with the appearance of not only robotic vacuum cleaners, but also with the first-generation of social robots and smart devices. The challenges that face both the robotics and artificial intelligence communities are how the necessary intelligence for such new environments can be created as well as how to make artificial agents capable of not only solving tasks at hand but also considering social environments around them during interaction with human users so as to behave appropriately. Within the school, we plan to address the tension created by the balance between task-specific artificial intelligence and the demands of sociability required to function effectively in human-centered environments.

Community

The intelligent social robotics community is interlinked with a variety of other communities such as disciplines and sub-disciplines of robotics. Generally, one can see the community has a strong association with Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the cognitive aspects of robotics. We will address these different areas through interesting talks with renowned keynote speakers accompanied by hands-on workshops.

To foster dialogue and collaboration between researchers, this school will be designed to be as interactive as possible, with organized discussions and informal breakout sessions across all days. As such, a large part of this effort is to bring together a community of robotic researchers who are working in the area of social robotics and artificial intelligence. Ample time will be provided for networking and informal discussions.

Who should attend

The school is highly suitable for researchers from academic institutes as well as from the industry. From the universities, we seek applications from PhD students and post-doctorates at all stages of their career. Researchers from industries whose research lies in the domains of application of A.I. in any human-centric scenarios such as Industry 4.0 and autonomous vehicles can also benefit immensely from participating in the school.

 

Funding

The school program is endorsed and supported by IEEE-RAS and JST-CREST:

 

 

 

JST-CREST through the project Symbol Emergence in Robotics for Future Human-Machine Collaboration

Support

This school is supported by Ritsumeikan University (R-GIRO):