PLENARY SPEAKERS

As robots are believed to soon populate human environments, they have received enthusiastic support in the scientific community. Most research aims at designing robots for assisting humans in daily lives, healthcare, or elderly care. However, there is also a less explored way of using robots – robots as tools to understand human cognition. In my lab, we take this approach, examining human cognitive mechanisms in social interaction. In this talk, I will present the work from my lab where we have examined conditions under which people treat robots as intentional agents and attribute mental states to them, as well as consequences that such attributions have for other cognitive processes. I will also discuss how attentional orienting, sensorimotor processes, and sense of agency unfold in interaction with humanoid robot partners. I will discuss these results in a broader context of using robots at the service of psychological research.

Professor Agnieszka Wykowska is the head of the unit “Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction” at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), in Genoa, Italy. She is also the Coordinator of the Center for Human Technologies, at the IIT. Her background is Cognitive Neuroscience (Master’s degree in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology from the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich in 2006). She obtained a PhD in Psychology (2008) from the same university. In 2016 she was awarded the ERC Starting grant “InStance: Intentional Stance for Social Attunement”. Between 2022 and 2024 she served in the role of President of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN). She is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Social Robotics. She is also board member of Association of ERC Grantees and a delegate to the European Research Area (ERA) Forum – an EU expert group shaping EU science policies. In 2023 she was awarded the Hans-Fischer Senior Fellowship from the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Technical University Munich to lead a research group “Human Cognition in Neuroengineering”.

Animals such as mice, cockroaches and spiders have the remarkable ability to maneuver through challenging cluttered natural terrain and have been inspiration for adaptable legged robotic systems. We hypothesize that animals vary their body geometry and mechanics to overcome the adaptability-agility tradeoffs which limit the performance of traditional soft robots. Inspired by locomotion strategies of cockroaches and spiders, we present our results related to the above using Compliant Legged Autonomous Robotic Insect (CLARI), our insect-scale, origami-based quadrupedal robot capable of passive shape morphing and active shape shifting, and demonstrate novel behaviors such as omnidirectional confined legged locomotion. While the distributed compliance of such soft-legged robots enables them adapt to explore complex environments, their gait design, control, and motion planning enable agile locomotion. However, this is often challenging due to a large number of unactuated/underactuated degrees of freedom. Towards addressing this issue, we present a geometric motion planning framework for autonomous, closed kinematic chain articulated systems that is computationally effective and has a promising potential for onboard and real-time gait generation. Finally, combining experimental and modeling efforts, we will present the beginning of a framework that enables us to quantify tradeoffs associated with shape change notably with respect to agility and adaptability.

Dr. Kaushik Jayaram is presently an Assistant Professor in Robotics at the Paul M Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Previously, he was a post-doctoral scholar in Prof. Rob Wood’s Microrobotics lab at Harvard University. He obtained his doctoral degree in Integrative Biology in 2015 from the University of California Berkeley mentored by Prof. Bob Full and undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2009, with interdisciplinary research experiences at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Dr. Jayaram’s research combines biology and robotics to, uncover the principles of robustness that make animals successful at locomotion in natural environments, and, in turn, inspire the design of the next generation of novel robots for effective real-world operation. His work has been published in a number of prestigious journals and gained significant popular media attention. Dr. Jayaram is an editorial board member for the journal Soft Robotics, and active member of IEEE and SICB. Besides academic research, Dr. Jayaram’s group is actively involved in several outreach activities that strive toward achieving diversity, equity and inclusivity in STEM and he currently leads the K12 Outreach group from Mechanical engineering and the Outreach and Inclusion group from Robotics at CU.

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