AASS Seminar - Epistemic planning and human-robot interaction

The research centre AASS arranges a seminar with Thomas Bolander, Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

Remote attendance: https://oru-se.zoom.us/j/65096623293

Abstract

A socially intelligent domestic robot should not only obey orders, but also proactively offer help and independently provide the information that the human needs (but not more!). This requires the robot to be able to do social perspective taking, or, have a Theory of Mind. I will present a formalism for multi-agent planning with Theory of Mind capabilities based on dynamic epistemic logic, where each agent is planning individually, but towards a joint goal, and coordination is achieved implicitly by observing the actions of other agents (including their announcements). I will then illustrate how we employ this formalism on a Pepper robot that can pass false-belief tasks and uses the planning formalism for deciding when to interfere with the actions of the human, e.g. when to point out the human’s false beliefs.

Bio

Thomas Bolander, PhD, is a professor of logic and artificial intelligence (AI) at Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (DTU Compute), Technical University of Denmark (DTU). His main research focus is on the modelling of social phenomena and social intelligence with the aim of creating explainable computer systems that can interact robustly and intelligently with humans and other computer systems. His research involves logic (in particular dynamic epistemic logic), automated planning, knowledge representation, cognitive robotics, and neurosymbolic AI. He is one of the founders and main researchers within the area of Epistemic Planning providing AI agents, e.g. robots, with the ability to take the perspective of other agents into account when planning. Thomas Bolander has been co-organiser of 15 conferences and workshops, 3 of them being workshops on epistemic planning. Most recently, Thomas Bolander was co-editor of a special issue of the Artificial Intelligence journal (AIJ) on epistemic planning. In addition to his technical research on AI, Thomas Bolander has also been serving in a number of commissions and think tanks working on the societal aspects of digitalisation and AI, and is currently serving on the expert committee on tech giants of the Danish government. He is also one of the central public communicators of AI in Denmark with 200+ popular science talks and 200+ media appearances on TV, radio, and in newspapers and magazines within the last 5 years. In 2019 he received the H.C. Ørsted award for excellence in science communication. He is also known for his innovations in teaching, having developed 12 different courses from scratch, and in 2006 he received the teacher of the year award at DTU.