Facial expressions, social signals
by Prof. Ruth Aylett (Heriot-Watt University, UK) https://www.hw.ac.uk/staff/uk/macs/ruth-aylett.htm
at Room 112 Research Bldg No 15 (Bldg#39) in Yoshida Main Campus, at 13:30-14:30, Friday November 2nd
Abstract
The Socially Competent Robots (SoCoRo) project is working on a robot trainer that could help adults with high-functioning autism to improve their ability to decode social signals in a workplace context. Such adults have a very high rate of unemployment and this is linked to deficits in their ability to interact successfully with workmates and employers. As part of this project, we are exploring the design of dynamic facial expressions that can be used as social signals in our eventual workplace-related scenario. This talk will present the project and our results so far.
Bio
Ruth Aylett has researched AI, graphical characters and robotics for nearly 30 years and has more than 250 publications in the field. She has led a number of EU-funded projects applying graphical characters to education against bullying and to education in cultural sensitivity. She was an investigator in the EMOTE project developing and empathic robot tutor and in the LIREC project, looking at long-term human-robot interaction. SoCoRo is her latest project and a very rare example of research with adults who have an autism spectrum disorder.
c/o
Toyoaki Nishida
Professor
Dept. of Intelligence Science and Technology Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
E-mail: nishida.toyoaki.4e@kyoto-u.ac.jp / nishida@i.kyoto-u.ac.jp /
Phone: +81-75-753-5371