<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"> <style></style> </head> <body lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"> <div class="WordSection1"> Dear All,<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> On 25th May Wednesday at 15:00, Prof. Stefan Kopp will give an online talk as part of the Embodied AI Initiative, HAI (Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence) Focus Area at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He will share his vision on data-driven vs embodied cognitive approaches in human-agent interaction.<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> For more information and registration: <a href="https://www.uu.nl/en/events/embodied-ai-talk-towards-socially-aware-cognitive-systems"> https://www.uu.nl/en/events/embodied-ai-talk-towards-socially-aware-cognitive-systems</a> <o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Title: <o:p></o:p> Towards socially aware cognitive systems: Dynamic social cognition and multimodal communication in human-agent interaction<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Abstract: <o:p></o:p> Embodied human-agent interaction has made great advancements in the last decades, including interactive learning, dialogue-based communication, or collaborative physical interaction. At the same time, the field is still facing hard challenges in coping with individual differences between users, the task- and context-related complexities of cooperative behavior, or maintaining acceptance over the long term. This has led to a demand for „socially aware“ A.I. and robots that can understand other’s at the level of their mental states, can made themselves understandable to others, or can respond to the needs and expectations of humans during collaborative interaction. I will discuss how this vision relates to recent trends (e.g human-aware A.I.) and I will argue that, in addition to the currently predominant data-driven approaches, an embodied cognitive approach is needed that can account for the embodied-agentive as well cognitive-affective nature of interaction partners, as well as for the dynamic and continuous adaptation processes taking place in situ within and between interaction partners. I will present work towards this vision, including on multimodal behavior generation and incremental coordination of mutual understanding in dialogue.<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Short bio:<o:p></o:p> Stefan Kopp is Prof. of Computer Science and head of the "Social Cognitive Systems" Group at the Faculty of Technology at Bielefeld University. He obtained his PhD in Artificial Intelligence for seminal work on intelligent multimodal agents. After a postdoc stay at Northwestern University (IL) and a research fellowship at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research ZiF (Bielefeld), he has been deputy coordinator of SFB 673 “Alignment in Communication“, principal investigator of the SFB/TRR 318 „Constructing Explainability“, deputy coordinator of the research center “Cognitive Interaction Technology“ (CITEC), and chairman of the German Cognitive Science Society (GK). Stefan is internationally renowned and has been awarded for his interdisciplinary research at the intersection of human communication, embodied-cognitive models of social intelligence, and bootstrapping it in conversational agents or social robots. He has been involved in leading research projects on human/child-robot interaction, multimodal communication, cognitive assistants, or explainable systems. His current research interests center around the interplay and coordinative dynamics of social cognition and communication in human-agent/robot interaction and collaboration.<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> -- Dr. Zerrin Yumak | Assistant Professor of Human-Centered Computing, Chair of the Informatics Research Advisory Committee, Founding member <o:p></o:p> of the Departmental Diversity Committee, Director of the Motion Capture and <o:p></o:p> Virtual Reality Lab | Utrecht University | Department of Information and Computing Sciences | Princetonplein 5, 3584 CC Utrecht | Buys Ballot Building room 4.20 <o:p> </o:p> |+31 30 253 7578 | <a href="mailto:z.yumak@uu.nl"> z.yumak@uu.nl</a> |www.zerrinyumak.com | Twitter: @zerrinyumak<o:p></o:p> Follow our Talk Series at Embodied AI here: <a href="https://embodiedaiuu.wixsite.com/home">https://embodiedaiuu.wixsite.com/home</a> <o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p> </div> </body> </html>