Trial lecture
"How can social robotics transform human interactions in healthcare and education settings?”
Time and place: September 27, 2024 11:15 AM. Auditorium SmallTalk, Ole Johan Dahls hus.
Main research findings
As robots are imported from industrial settings to homes and healthcare environments, new risks emerge. Chief among these are concerns about user safety and privacy, which must be carefully considered during the development and integration of robots into daily life. Ensuring these aspects is essential for building trust between humans and robots, allowing them to function effectively and safely in close proximity to people.
This thesis addresses these challenges by focusing on two key areas: improving safety through addressing the human-robot collision avoidance problem, and enhancing privacy through the use of privacy-preserving sensors in robots. In terms of safety, advanced control frameworks grounded in machine learning algorithms, control theory methods, and the integration of these two approaches have been developed to address the collision avoidance problem for robotic arms, ensuring safe operation without compromising efficiency. Regarding privacy, the thesis explores the use of privacy-preserving sensors such as thermal cameras and 3D lasers. These sensors offer effective monitoring while minimizing the collection of sensitive data, maintaining a balance between utility and privacy. By integrating these sensors with multimodal deep learning models, robots can recognize human activities and monitor users during human-robot interaction without invading personal privacy. This thesis contributes to safer and more private human-robot interactions, particularly in sensitive environments like healthcare, paving the way for more trusted and widely accepted robotic systems in daily life.
Adjudication committee
- Professor Adriana Tapus, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France
- Professor Filippo Sanfilippo, University of Agder, Norway
- Associate Professor Sven Peter Näsholm, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
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Professor Jim Tørresen, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
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Professor Tobias Mahler, Department of Private Law, University of Oslo, Norway
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Senior researcher Diana Saplacan, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
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Associate Professor Weria Khaksar, Department of Mechanical engineering and technology management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
Chair of defence
Professor Margunn Aanestad
Contact information at Department: Mozhdeh Sheibani Harat