Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering

*Abstract*: Even though we are used to the presence of large robots in industrial spaces, or small vacuum robots in our living rooms, there is still a clear gap in the generic application of robots in our daily lives. This difference is not singular, but it is composed by gaps in the state-of-the-art on many topics related to robotic systems, between which we can list: energy efficiency and batteries, computational efficiency, sensorial limitations, and finally the required ability of learning and adapting to the unpredictable tasks in which they will be applied. This seminar covers research on topics related to the question “why are not robots everywhere yet?”, by examining the current limitations of methods for hardware generation for robotics, computation efficiency and the application of event-driven sensors for robotics, and human-in-the-loop machine learning methods for robotics. And finally, we aim to start an open discussion on what should be the next steps for bringing robots to our daily lives.

*Short Bio*: Always motivated by the ever evolving field of robotics, Leandro de Souza Rosa has researched different topics aiming to enable the general applicability of robots in our daily life. Starting from optimization techniques for improving hardware development, aiming to enable the creation of more efficient hardware for mobile autonomous robots. Followed by the use of novel event-driven sensors, whose differential encoding offers extreme throughputs with a compact encoding, enabling robots to operate in extreme environments. And finally, exploring novel machine learning methods that enable robots to learn from human teachers. He has a BSc (2013) in Computer Engineering and obtained the Ph.D. (2019) by the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences at The University of São Paulo, Brazil, which was partially developed at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, U.K. He worked as a postdoc researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy, and is currently with the Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.