Plenary Speakers
-
Title: Empowering AI with Human Insight: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities in Responsible, Trustworthy, and Participatory AI Development
Abstract:
The operationalization of ethical principles, current and emerging legislation, and the understanding and mitigation of potential consequences to individuals and society are key challenges in responsible, trustworthy, and participatory AI development. Responsible innovation and ethical tech are essential to build public trust and meet legal obligations. Participatory AI is an approach to AI development that actively involves various stakeholders, including end-users, communities, and other relevant parties, in the design, development, and deployment processes of AI systems. This method emphasizes collaboration, transparency, and inclusivity to ensure that AI technologies are aligned with the values, needs, and expectations of the people who will be affected by them. Examples of research projects that bridge the gap between businesses, academia, and people will be presented, demonstrating how the use of ethical toolkits can help build public confidence to question the use of AI in their everyday lives, enhance academic research and provide meaningful public engagement to business. By fostering a collaborative approach, the speaker will illustrate how AI systems can be created to be not only innovative but also aligned with societal values and ethical standards.Bio: Keeley Crockett
Keeley Crockett SMIEEE SFHEA is a Professor in Computational Intelligence at Manchester Metropolitan University and Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee SHIELD (Ethical, Legal, Social, Environmental and Human Dimensions of AI/CI). She has over 27 years' experience of research and development in Ethical and responsible AI (for both SME's and an advocate for citizen voice), computational intelligence algorithms and applications, including adaptive psychological profiling, fuzzy systems, semantic similarity, and dialogue systems. Keeley has led work on Place based practical Artificial Intelligence, facilitating a parliamentary inquiry with Policy Connect and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Data Analytics (APGDA), leading to the inquiry report "Our Place Our Data: Involving Local People in Data and AI-Based Recovery".
She obtained STRENGTH IN PLACES POLICY funded engagement work with Greater Manchester businesses on "SME Readiness for Adoption of Ethical Approaches to AI Development and Deployment". She is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) on the EPSRC "PEAs in Pods: Co-production of community based public engagement for data and AI research." Grant, Co-I on Manchester City Council funded Peoples Panel for AI, which is a follow on from funding obtained from The Alan Turing Institute "People-powered AI: responsible research and innovation through community ideation and involvement". She is currently PI on an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with My First Five Years, CI on Innovate UK KTP with COUCH and CI on Innovate UK KTP with GMCA. She is Co-Lead for AI Stream within the Centre for Digital Innovation. She is currently on the Steering Group of the Government Inquiry on AI and Skills in the Digital Aid working with Policy Connect and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Data Analytics (APGDA) and a collaborator with HMG Cabinet Office.
Keeley was appointed to the UKRI's AI & Robotics Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) on 1st April 2024. She is a member of the IEEE Computational intelligence Society ADCOM (2023-25), an active IEEE CIS volunteering in numerous subcommittees.
-
Title: Physical Intelligence of Small-scale Robots
Abstract
Intelligence of physical agents is not only enabled by their computational intelligence in their brain, but also by their physical intelligence encoded in their body. This presentation reports bioinspired and abstract physical intelligence methods designed and implemented in small-scale robots from insect scale down to cell-size scale. Light-powered phototactic and bacteria-driven chemo/magnetotactic microswimmers are presented at the cell-size scale. At the milliscale, bioinspired soft-bodied robots with magneto-elastic composite bodies are presented to navigate in complex, confined spaces. Soft-body design enables active shape programming-based adaptive and multimodal navigation, diverse functions, and safe operation. These soft millirobots are aimed to be used as implantable wireless medical devices in the small-diameter, tortuous, risky and hard-to-reach blood vessels and other sites inside the human body. Liquid crystal elastomer types of stimuli-responsive materials are also integrated with magneto-elastic composites towards self-sensing and self-adapting millirobots. Finally, mechanical computing systems using bistable metastructures are proposed to encode physical computing in millimachines.Bio: Metin Sitti
Metin Sitti is the President and Professor of Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey since fall 2023. Formerly, he was a Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany (2014-2023), Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2020-2024), and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2002-2014) and a research scientist at UC Berkeley (1999-2002) in USA. He received his BSc (1992) and MSc (1994) degrees from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and PhD degree from University of Tokyo, Japan (1999). His research interests include small-scale mobile robotics, bio-inspiration, wireless medical devices, and physical intelligence. He is a National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Member in USA and an IEEE Fellow. He received the Highly Cited Researcher recognition (2021, 2022, 2023), Breakthrough of the Year Award in the Falling Walls World Science Summit (2020), ERC Advanced Grant (2019), Rahmi Koç Science Medal (2018), SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award (2011), and NSF CAREER Award (2005). He is the editor-in-chief of Progress in Biomedical Engineering and Journal of Micro-Bio Robotics journals and associate editor in Science Advances journal.
- Title: Social Robots and LLMs: a step towards to behave more human like
Abstract
In this talk, we like to present our research on humanoid robots from 2008 to today. We started with EVA, a humanoid head, capable of interacting and showing emotions. We have performed very early research on Eva on modelling speech and facial expressions. Eva was playing on a theatre stage in Zurich in 2010. In NTU, Singapore, Professor Thalmann has worked since 2013 on the humanoid Nadine social robot to model it behaviour as a social companion. This research includes social global awareness, object and actions recognition, gestures modelling including hands, and believable speech dialog interaction. Since 2021, with the venue of LLMs, a new platform has been implemented extending LLMs models with short and long term memory and Rags. We will demonstrate Nadine in action and what social robots can do today and tomorrow.Short Bio: Prof. Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, Research Director of MIRALab, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Professor Thalmann has established MIRALab at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, a ground-breaking interdisciplinary multimedia research institute. She participated in more than 50 European research projects, helping MIRALab to develop revolutionising interdisciplinary research in computer graphics, computer animation, and virtual worlds and producing impactful work that synergises art, fashion, computer graphics. Her work is regularly displayed at museums, galleries and fashion shows.
In NTU, Singapore (2009-2021), she revolutionized social robotics by unveiling the first social robot Nadine that can have mood and emotions and remember people and actions. ( wikipedia: social Nadine robot).
Besides having bachelor's and master's degrees in disciplines such as psychology, biology, chemistry and computer science, Professor Thalmann completed her PhD in quantum physics at the University of Geneva. She has received honorary doctorates from Leibniz University of Hannover and the University of Ottawa in Canada and several prestigious other awards as the Humboldt Research Award in Germany.
She is Editor-in-Chief of The Visual Computer, co-Editor-in-Chief of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, and editor of many other scientific journals. She is a life member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences.