Cognitive Social Robots
Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics is a major research topic nowadays, not only because the development of intelligent robots is one of the overarching goal of AI, but also and above all because of the increasing boost coming from industrial applications, ranging from automated logistics to autonomous driving.
The deployment of such "intelligent robots" (i.e., robots driven by AI methods and techniques) is however still limited, mainly due to the difficulty in dealing with all the aspects of the real world and to the risk of low acceptability of the users.
Moreover, when people are involved in the task, there are three main factors that significantly increase the difficulty of the problem: higher unpredictability of the evolution of the scenario, imperfect and partial knowledge about the situation, expectation for the robot to act according to usual social norms. The seminar illustrates recent research in the development of Cognitive Social Robots, aiming at properly integrating robotics techniques, cognitive functionalities and social behaviours.