Talk title:
Towards Socio-physical Human-Robot Interaction and Collaboration

ABSTRACT of the TALK
This talk will give an overview of the recent theoretical and technological developments at the HRI2 laboratory of the Italian Institute of Technology to estimate human physical and cognitive loads and create anticipatory robot behaviors. The objective is to create intelligent and natural interactions between humans and robots/cobots in both social and physical levels.


BIO
Arash Ajoudani is a tenured senior scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), where he leads the Human-Robot Interfaces and physical Interaction (HRI²) laboratory. He received his PhD degree in Robotics and Automation from University of Pisa and IIT in July 2014. His PhD thesis was a finalist for the Georges Giralt PhD award 2015 - best European PhD thesis in robotics.

He is a recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) starting grant 2019. He was a winner of the Amazon Research Awards 2019, the winner of the Solution Award 2019 (Premio Innovazione Robotica at MECSPE2019), the winner of the KUKA Innovation Award 2018, the winner of the Werob best poster award 2018, a finalist for the best conference paper award at Humanoids 2018, a finalist for the best interactive paper award at Humanoids 2016, a finalist for the best oral presentation award at Automatica (SIDRA) 2014, the winner of the best student paper award and a finalist for the best conference paper award at ROBIO 2013, and a finalist for the best manipulation paper award at ICRA 2012.

He is the coordinator of the Horizon-2020 project SOPHIA with a consortium of 12 partners from the leading European research and industrial organisations. He has contributed to several successful European projects (H2020 and FP7) such as WALKMAN, WearHap, SOMA, and SoftPro.

He is the author of the book "Transferring Human Impedance Regulation Skills to Robots" in the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR), and several publications in journals, international conferences, and book chapters. He is currently serving as the executive manager of the IEEE-RAS Young Reviewers' Program (YRP), and as chair and representative of the IEEE-RAS Young Professionals Committee. He has been serving as a member of scientific advisory committee and as an associate editor for several international journals and conferences such as IEEE RAL, Biorob, ICORR, etc. His main research interests are in physical human-robot interaction and cooperation, robotic manipulation, robust and adaptive control, assistive robotics, and tele-robotics.