An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids were completely within the domain of science fiction and frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot technology now allow the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots.
A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion, or for other purposes. In general, humanoid robots have a torso, a head, two arms, and two legs, though some humanoid robots may replicate only part of the body, for example, from the waist up. Some humanoid robots also have heads designed to replicate human facial features such as eyes and mouths. Androids are humanoid robots built to aesthetically resemble humans.
Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC), synthetic consciousness or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The same terminology can be used with the term "sentience" instead of "consciousness" when specifically designating phenomenal consciousness.
Rodney Allen Brooks is an Australian roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the actionist approach to robotics. He was a Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot and co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Rethink Robotics and currently is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Robust.AI.
The School of Informatics is an academic unit of the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, responsible for research, teaching, outreach and commercialisation in informatics. It was created in 1998 from the former department of artificial intelligence, the Centre for Cognitive Science and the department of computer science, along with the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) and the Human Communication Research Centre.
David Hanson Jr. is an American roboticist who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong-based robotics company founded in 2013.
Human–robot interaction (HRI) is the study of interactions between humans and robots. Human–robot interaction is a multidisciplinary field with contributions from human–computer interaction, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language processing, design, and psychology. A subfield known as physical human–robot interaction (pHRI) has tended to focus on device design to enable people to safely interact with robotic systems.
Lucy Suchman is Professor Emerita of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom, also known for her work at Xerox PARC in the 1980s and 90s.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to artificial intelligence:
Aaron Sloman is a philosopher and researcher on artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He held the Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, and before that a chair with the same title at the University of Sussex. Since retiring he is Honorary Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at Birmingham. He has published widely on philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence; he also collaborated widely, e.g. with biologist Jackie Chappell on the evolution of intelligence.
Neurorobotics is the combined study of neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence. It is the science and technology of embodied autonomous neural systems. Neural systems include brain-inspired algorithms, computational models of biological neural networks and actual biological systems. Such neural systems can be embodied in machines with mechanic or any other forms of physical actuation. This includes robots, prosthetic or wearable systems but also, at smaller scale, micro-machines and, at the larger scales, furniture and infrastructures.
Frank Ritter is a professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, professor in the Department of Psychology, and professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State University. Before coming to Penn State, he was a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nottingham, and a visiting distinguished professor in the Psychology Department at Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany).
Hiroshi Ishiguro is a Japanese engineer and director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, part of the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, Japan. A notable development of the laboratory is the Actroid, a humanoid robot with lifelike appearance and visible behaviour such as facial movements.
The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) (in English: Italian Institute of Technology) is a scientific research centre based in Genoa (Italy, EU). Its main goal is the advancement of science, in Italy and worldwide, through projects and discoveries oriented to applications and technology. Some account IIT as the best Italian scientific research centre.
Christopher Granger Atkeson is an American roboticist and a professor at the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Atkeson is known for his work in humanoid robots, soft robotics, and machine learning, most notably on locally weighted learning.
Nadine is a gynoid humanoid social robot that is modelled on Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann. The robot has a strong human-likeness with a natural-looking skin and hair and realistic hands. Nadine is a socially intelligent robot which returns a greeting, makes eye contact, and can remember all the conversations had with it. It is able to answer questions autonomously in several languages, simulate emotions both in gestures and facially, depending on the content of the interaction with the user. Nadine can recognise persons it has previously seen, and engage in flowing conversation. Nadine has been programmed with a "personality", in that its demeanour can change according to what is said to it. Nadine has a total of 27 degrees of freedom for facial expressions and upper body movements. With persons it has previously encountered, it remembers facts and events related to each person. It can assist people with special needs by reading stories, showing images, put on Skype sessions, send emails, and communicate with other members of the family. It can play the role of a receptionist in an office or be dedicated to be a personal coach.
Joanna Joy Bryson is professor at Hertie School in Berlin. She works on Artificial Intelligence, ethics and collaborative cognition. She has been a British citizen since 2007.
Aude G. Billard is a Swiss physicist in the fields of machine learning and human-robot interactions. As a full professor at the School of Engineering at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Billard’s research focuses on applying machine learning to support robot learning through human guidance. Billard’s work on human-robot interactions has been recognized numerous times by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and she currently holds a leadership position on the executive committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) as the vice president of publication activities.
Reinhard Moratz is a German science educator, academic and researcher. He is Ausserplanmässiger Professor at the University of Münster’s Institute for Geoinformatics. He has worked on spatial cognition and reasoning, qualitative theories of low-dimensional entities like straight line segments and oriented points, artificial intelligence and specifically the OPRA calculus. His research is based on computational models that account for the varying reference frames used in giving verbal instructions about navigation.
Helen Hastie is the Head of the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh and a RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow. She specialises in Human-Robot Interaction and Multimodal interfaces. Hastie has undertaken projects such as AI personal assistants for remote robots, autonomous systems and spoken dialogue systems for sectors in defence and energy. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
