Postdoc Talk Event: 8 July (7.30 PM), at the Railway Club
(all welcome, more details)
Postdoc Talk Title: Robot Self-Modeling and Self-Other Reasoning
Abstract:
Dr. Justin Hart’s research encompasses areas of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and human-robot interaction in which reasoning about the robot’s “self” plays an important role. Traditionally, robots do not learn about their selves. Knowledge of the robot’s body and senses typically comes from engineering drawings or external calibrations; a process that can cause problems that designers must work around. These robots learn and reason about the tasks that they perform, but the robot itself is often absent form this learning process.

This talk will discuss material from Justin Hart’s doctoral work, in which he designed a system that enables a robot to learn about its body and senses by using them in conjunction with each other. The robot constructs a unified “self-model,” which is inspired by the earliest forms of self-awareness learned in infancy.The robot is able to use its self-model to perform novel tasks such as inferring the visual perspective of a mirror.

The talk will also discuss Justin’s current postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia, in which he is developing techniques to enable robots to perform self-other social reasoning. Such reasoning comes easily to humans (“He is looking at that.” “She intends to hand me the object.”), but is still remarkably difficult for robots to perform. Advances in self-other social reasoning will help to enable robots to work in roles where they must act as collaborators to human operators.

Biography:
Justin Hart is a postdoctoral fellow in the Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CARIS) Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of British Columbia, where he is supervised by Professor Elizabeth Croft. At UBC, his research focuses on enabling humans and robots to effectively communicate and collaborate with each other. As part of this he is working on enabling machines to make inferences and predictions about human behavior, and to perform self-reflective reasoning processes in order to effectively collaborate on human-robot collaborative assembly tasks.

Dr. Hart received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University in November, 2014, where he was advised by Professor Brian Scassellati. For his dissertation, “Robot Self-Modeling,” he developed a system that enabled a robot to make inferences about its body and senses through data sampled during operation. This process is inspired by the process by which children learn about their sensory and physical capabilities and how they are able to interact with the environment; which represents one of the earliest forms of self-awareness to develop during infancy.

Dr. Hart’s work has appeared in New Scientist, BBC News, NBC News, Business Standard, CBS SmartPlanet, El Mundo, the Yale Graduate School Newsletter, GE’s Focus Forward Films, the Ideacity Conference, abd Creative Mornings: Vancouver, and received an award from the SME. More on information can be found at http://justinhart.net.

Postdoc Talk Event: 8 July (7.30 PM), at the Railway Club
(all welcome, more details)
Postdoc Talk Title: Giving peace a chance…
Abstract:
In 1994, the Genocide against Tutsis occurred in Rwanda. An estimated 800,000 to a million people were murdered. Subsequently, Rwandan government made a difficult decision to release perpetrators of the Genocide back to communities. This event led to a circumstance in which the returning murderers must now live side-by-side with survivors in same rural villages. To support community reintegration and reconciliation process, a forgiveness-based reconciliation approach was initially introduced, where perpetrators confessed and apologized for their crimes committed and begged for survivors’ forgiveness. However in many instances, survivors could not forgive, perhaps understandably. Furthermore, survivors suffered from enormous pressure to forgive and moral dilemma of not being able to forgive. Dr. Minami’s research team developed an alternative approach to nurture reconciliation through action, called the action-based psychosocial reconciliation approach (ABPRA). Former perpetrators who participate in his program do NOT ask for forgiveness. Rather, they offer their labour to survivors as a concrete act of apology. Miracle of humanity and human relationships emerges when survivors decide to receive. In this talk, Dr. Minami will be speaking about experience of survivors and perpetrators who decided to participate in his approach. Dr. Minami will report with video-clips and photos capturing the moments of change. This research also holds a promise to develop into the world’s first scientifically proven method to prevent war and build peace.

Biography:
Dr. Minami received his Ph.D. in Counselling Psychology from the University of British Columbia. He is the current holder of the UBC’s premier Morita Post-doctoral Fellowship for Peace Action Research and is the founder and co-director of the Globe in Peace Project at UBC (www.globeinpeace.org). Dr. Minami is a certified Morita therapist registered with the Japanese Society for Morita Therapy (JSMT) in Japan and also serves as the Assistant Secretary General for the International Committee for Morita Therapy. His research interests include application and evaluation of group dynamics theories to effective mediation, inter-group conflict resolution, and community psychosocial reconciliation in post-war contexts. Dr. Minami is the co-founder and a current director of the Prison Fellowship Rwanda-Morita Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Research.