A Seminar on Control and Perception of Complex Autonomous Robotics Systems Conducted by KICS UET Lahore
Lahore, 15th October, 2019 – National Centre of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) of Al-Khawarazmi Institute of Computer Science (KICS) organized a seminar on ‘Control and Perception of Complex Autonomous Robotics Systems’ on October 14th 2019 in seminar hall of KICS at University of Engineering and Technology Lahore. Invited speakers of this seminar were Prof. Dr. Karsten Berns and Dr. Zuhair Zafar. All researchers, students and faculty took deep interest in this much-in-talks concept that has gained focus of the world these days. Sensing the importance of robotics, KICS UET organized this seminar so that the latest technological developments in this field can be discussed and reach to the researchers. Vast attendance was seen at the hall. This seminar was conducted on a special request of Dr. Shiekh Faisal Rashid, who is an alumni of University of Kaiserslautern and is the director AI Research Labs and Co-PI National Center of AI (NCAI) KICS. Dr. Faisal obtained his Doctorate of Engineering (Dr.-Ing) from the same university in 2014 and has strong academic relations and collaborations with Prof. Dr. Karsten Berns for more than a decade.
Prof. Dr. Karsten Berns delivered his talk on ‘Control and Perception of Complex Autonomous Robotics Systems’ which was well-received by the audience. Today the operation of commercial vehicles has increasing demands on efficiency, safety and quality especially in the domain of autonomous off-road robotics ranging from agricultural robots, construction machines to rescue vehicles of different sizes. The research includes sensor processing, localization, path planning and navigation in these challenging outdoor areas. One example of the research activities is the off-road robot RAVON which is driven by 4 electric motors and was designed to test autonomous navigation in forested terrain. A video was also played to let the audience see as to how RAVON works in the forests? He then revealed that his latest research is being done on perception algorithms for commercial vehicles e.g. obstacle detection for a semi-autonomous tractor or the detection humans next to a garbage collection truck.
Dr. Karsten Bernss is a full professor at TU Kaiserslautern since 2003. His repertoire included a number of distinctions such as he received his PhD from University of Karlsruhe in 1994. He was the head of the IDS department of the FZI Research center for information and technology till 2003. During Dr. Karsten Berns time at Karlsruhe, he examined adaptive control concepts for different types of service robots. His present research activities are realization of reliable, complex autonomous robotic systems. He has also served as a Dean of the department of computer science at the University of Kaiserslautern (2007-2010).
Second talk of the seminar was by Zuhair Zafar and his talk’s title was ‘Automatic Assessment of Human Personality Traits in context of Human-Robot Interaction’. The speaker revealed that Human-Robot interaction was a major challenge in the development of complex humanoid robots. Zuhair then mentioned that apart from the verbal communication the use of non-verbal cues such as hand, head and body gestures or mimics could improve the understanding of the intention of the robot. Later he depicted that by perceiving such mechanisms of a human in a typical interaction scenario, the humanoid robot could adapt its interaction skills in a better way.
On educational end, Zuhair Zafar is a Ph.D. student in the department of computer science at TU Kaiserslautern, Germany. Previously he graduated with Electrical Engineering degree in 2011 from GCU Lahore. He completed the Master in Computer Engineering from LUMS in 2013. On professional front, he has been associated with robotics research lab and working in the field of Human-robot Interaction since 2014. His area of research includes emotion and behavior analysis of humans in the context of humanoid robotics.
Posted on: October 17, 2019 Muzammil Hassan