Sponsor: IEEE CS / OC ACM
Speaker: Prof. Maja Mataric

Meeting Date: Jan 18, 2023
Time: 6:30PM
Cost:
Location: Knobbe Martens’ Irvine offices
Reservations: IEEE
Summary:
The nexus of advances in robotics, natural language processing, and machine learning has created opportunities for personalized robots in a variety of domains of daily life. The current pandemic has both caused and exposed unprecedented levels of health & wellness, education, and training needs worldwide. Socially assistive robotics has the potential to address those needs through personalized and affordable support that complements human care. This talk will discuss human-robot interaction methods for socially assistive robotics that utilize multi-modal interaction data and expressive and persuasive robot behavior to monitor, coach, and motivate users to engage in health, wellness, education and training activities. Methods and results will be presented that include modeling, learning, and personalizing user motivation, engagement, and coaching of healthy children and adults, stroke patients, Alzheimer’s patients, and children with autism spectrum disorders, in short and long-term (month+) deployments in schools, therapy centers, and homes. Research and commercial implications and pathways will be discussed.

Bio: Prof. Maja Mataric Prof. Maja Mataric´ is Chan Soon-Shiong Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC), founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center, and Interim Vice President of Research. She received a PhD and MS in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence MIT, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas. She is a Fellow of the AAAS, IEEE, AAAI, and ACM, the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation, the Okawa Foundation Award, NSF Career Award, MIT TR35 Innovation Award, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, and the USC Remarkable Woman Award, among others. Prof. Mataric´ is the author of the popular textbook “The Robotics Primer” and has published extensively (h-index 100; 39,594 citations as of 1/30/21). She has served on a number of advisory boards, including the National Science Foundation CISE Division, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council, Willow Garage, and Evolution Robotics.