UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents


             "Towards ad hoc Interactions with Robots"

                  Dr. Subramanian Ramamoorthy
                    (School of Informatics,
                 University of Edinburgh, UK)

                    24 October 2012  (Wednesday)
                            1 -2  pm


                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                      * * Room C152  * *

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available


Abstract:


A primary motivation for work within my group is the notion of
autonomous agents that can interact, robustly over the long term, with
an incompletely known environment that continually changes. In this talk
I will describe results from a few different projects that attempt to
address key aspects of this big question.

I will begin by looking at how task encodings can be made effective
using qualitative (geometric) structure in the strategy space. Using
examples that may be familiar to many machine learning researchers --
such as control of an inverted pendulum and bipedal walkers -- we will
explore this connection between the geometric structure of solutions and
strategies for dealing with a continually changing task context. The key
result here would be regarding ways to combine exploitation of 'natural'
dynamics with the benefits of active planning.

Can there be similarly flexible encodings for more general decision
problems, beyond the domain of robot control? I will describe recent
results from our work on policy reuse and transfer learning, demonstrating
how it is possible to construct agents that can learn to adapt, through
a process of belief updating based on policy performance, to a changing
task context including the case where the change may be induced by other
decision making agents.

Finally, building on this theme of making decisions in the presence of
other decision making agents, I will briefly describe results from our
recent experiments in human-robot interaction where agents must learn
to influence the behaviour of other agents in order to achieve their
task. This experiment is a step towards general and implementable models
of ad hoc interaction where agents learn from experience to shape aspects
of that interaction without the benefits of prior coordination and related
knowledge. I will conclude with some remarks on the potential practical
uses of such models and learning methods in a wide variety of applications
ranging from personal robotics to intelligent user interfaces.


About the Speaker:

Dr. Subramanian Ramamoorthy is a Lecturer in Robotics at the School of
Informatics, University of Edinburgh, since 2007. Previously, he received
a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of
Texas at Austin.

His current research work is focussed on problems of autonomous learning
and decision making over time and under uncertainty, by long-lived agents
and agent teams interacting with continually changing worlds. These
problems are solved using a combination of methods including layered
representations involving geometric/topological abstractions, game
theoretic and related models of inter-dependent decision making, and
machine learning with emphasis on issues of transfer and online learning,
reinforcement learning, etc.

He has twice been a finalist for the Best Paper Award at major
international conferences in the field of robotics - ICRA 2008 and
IROS 2010, and serves in editorial and programme committee roles
for conferences and journals in the areas of autonomous robotics
and artificial intelligence. He leads Team Edinferno, the first UK
entry in the Standard Platform League at the RoboCup International
Competition. This work has received media coverage including, notably, by
BBC News and The Telegraph, and has been the basis for numerous public
engagement activities, such as at the Royal Society Summer Science
Exhibition and the Edinburgh International Science festival.

Prior to joining the School of Informatics, he was a Staff Engineer
with National Instruments Corp., where he has been responsible for five
products in the areas of motion control, computer vision and dynamic
simulation. This work has resulted in seven US patents and numerous
industry awards for product innovation.

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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
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