Events
“Expressive Movement as Universal Language between Humans & Social Robots” – Emilia Barakova & Roos van Berkel
As we live in a rapidly ageing society, professionals in mental health care and robotics collaborate to find out how technology might contribute to social inclusion and mental wellbeing. Emilia and Roos’ related research revolves around relationships between humans and robots: from conceptual design to designing embodied interactions. They investigate how social robotics can contribute to the quality of life regarding aspects such as autonomy (living at home longer), emotional well-being (relieving unwanted loneliness) and communication.
Emilia and Roos use movement analysis and choreographic principles in order to investigate and enhance human-robot interaction and gain a more refined understanding of the communication power of the behavioural cues. During this seminar, they will present the broader scope of their work which focuses on elderly care, physical rehabilitation and child care, and will zoom in on their latest research which compares how elderly with dementia interact with a cognitive game versus a responsive dinosaur robot.
Emilia I. Barakova (TU Eindhoven, Designed Intelligence) received her Master’s degree in electronics and automation from the Technical University of Sofia, Sofia, (BG), and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics and physics from Groningen University, Groningen, (NL), in 1999. She has experience in artificial intelligence and robotics (Groningen University and GMD-Japan Robotics lab), Brain-inspired robotics (RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan), and Social signal processing and Social robotics (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL). She is currently with the Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, and serves as head of ID Social Robotics Lab. Her recent research is on modelling social and emotional behaviour for applications to social robotics and robots for social training and inclusion. She is an editor of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, and an Associate Editor International Journal of Social Robotics and has organized 3 IEEE and/or ACM sponsored international conferences.
Roos van Berkel (CMA) is a choreographer and movement researcher. Educated at Laban London and LIMS New York, she has taught movement analysis and research at the Academy for Theatre and Dance (Amsterdam) and at the Eindhoven University of Technology for the past ten years. Roos specialises in describing and documenting the specific components of movement as well as the ‘networks’ in which that movement takes place. Her choreographic work focuses on the relationship between human and non-human performers through interactive technology.