Robots: what they can do - and what they cannot do!
Elin Anna Topp, Lund University
Recently, a lot of discussion could be observed regarding artificial intelligence (AI), robots, autonomous cars, technology ethics, and - not the least - deep learning and systems like AlphaGo and DeepStack that, based on such techniques, would "simply learn" to play Go or Poker on human champion level. There is also a lot of discussion about robots as part of industrial automation efforts that would be taking over “our” jobs.
With this presentation that is essentially based on my “AI in Robotics” overview lecture being part of the Applied AI course at Lund University / LTH, I try to give the audience some insight into current robotics (and AI) research, by explaining different types of robots and their abilities - as well as limitations. I will give examples of achievements (and failures) both from our own work at LTH’s RobotLab and from other sites, and I hope to be able to put at least some of the buzzwords flooding the media into perspective.
Short bio:
Dr. Elin A. Topp holds since 2012 a Senior Lecturer position in the group for Robotics and Semantic Systems, Department of Computer Science, at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. She obtained her Ph.D. and Licentiate degrees in 2009 and 2006 respectively from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, where she worked on different aspects of Human Augmented Mapping in the Computational Vision and Active Perception group at the Centre for Autonomous Systems, (CVAP/CAS). Originating from Germany, Dr. Topp received her MSc. degree from Karlsruhe University, now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in 2004. Elin’s research interests lie in the overlapping fields of AI (mainly probabilistic reasoning), Human Robot Interaction and Robotics, where she aims to equip both mobile service and industrial robotic systems with the (communicative) means to understand and express that they do not understand. She is currently involved in the Swedish Wallenberg Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) and in the EU-funded project SARAFun."