News

An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Waterloo's Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab (SIRRL) has found that people prefer interacting with robots they perceive to have social identities like their own.

This finding was made by a pair of Waterloo professors: Dr. Moojan Ghafurian, based in the Department of Systems Design Engineering and Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who worked together to conduct new research on human interactions with social robots. These robots possess social abilities and can interact with humans in interpersonal and social manners.

Kerstin Dautenhahn was a speaker at the AI for Social Good Stream, part of Industry Day: Co-hosted by Waterloo AI & Advanced Manufacturing Consortium (AMC). Her talk was entitled “Towards Adaptive Social Robots: Integrating Physiological Adaptation in Human-Robot Interactions” and gave a brief introduction into social robotics followed by an overview of the HRI Physio Lib project at SIRRL.

A new study by Moojan Ghafurian, Collin Ellard, and Kerstin Dautenhahn shows people are more open to the use of social robots after living through the coronavirus pandemic.

Read more on University of Waterloo News and London Evening Standard.

This event is a celebration of the Engineering Excellence Fellowship and Advanced Manufacturing Fellowship recipients who began their programs in the last 5 terms. Hamza Mahdi (MASc student in SIRRL and award recipient) and Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn (his research supervisor) were invited to join in the celebration.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) interviewed Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn in their series on responsible AI on Tuesday, October 8, 2019. 

This series is part of their Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law (SRHRL) program. This event that was broadcasted (live) on AAAS facebook page was focused on intelligent toys and AI technologies aimed at children. 

Canadian roadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio interviewed professor Kerstin Dautenhahn on Monday Oct 7th, 2019. 

This interview was discussing whether robots would make better political leaders than humans, which was based on an article published in World Economic Forum that was written by one of the guests in the show. 

On Thursday, October 10th, 2019, Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn participated in a panel on "Breadth of Artificial Intelligence" as part of the Waterloo Defense Research Forum in the University of Waterloo. 

Moojan Ghafurian, Graham Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, and Kerstin Dautenhahn, Canada 150 Chair in Intelligent Robotics in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have received a catalyst grant from the University of Waterloo’s Network for Aging Research to d

Social and intelligent robotics research lab members attended the Research Institute for Aging (RIA) curiosity fair and won the most interactive project award! The people at RIA were very enthusiastic with Miro and Pepper. The picture shows, from left to right, Dr. Tahereh Kamali, Aishwarya Aravamuthan, Dr. Moojan Ghafurian, and a fair participant.