Teaching intelligent robots to understand humans

There is a substantial international presence when the participants in the project gather for a workshop in Umeå. Umeå University coordinates the EU project that has received over 21 million SEK and gathers participants from companies and universities in Sweden, Israel, Germany, the UK, Belgium and France.

The project, dubbed INTRO, is a research school as well as a development project. Ten young scientists have already been recruited to a unique training program in the field of robotics. During the workshop, a service robot made by one of INTRO’s industrial partners was also presented.

30 scientists and industry representatives gathered at Umeå university to coordinate their work in the field of intelligent robots within the EU project INTRO. In the center a service robot built by one of INTRO’s industrial partners. 

Thomas Hellström, Thomas Hellström, at the department of computing science at Umeå University, says:
“We will work together to create a new generation of scientists with a broad understanding of the research and technology needed to develop intelligent robots capable of interacting with humans.”

The ten young doctoral students and research assistants will be developing methods and technologies for robots who can interact with humans, sense a the state of a human’s emotions by analyzing video information and audio, and learn to solve tasks in a good way.

Thomas Hellström, the project coordinator, says:
“We have now defined eight research projects that together will form the basis of two integrated robotic systems that will be developed by our industrial partners.”

Participants from Umeå University include Thomas Hellström, Benjamin Fonooni, Bo Li, Ulrik Söderström, Haibo Li, Guy Madison and Lars-Erik Janlert.

The project has been dubbed INTRO – Interactive Robotics Research Network – and will be running for four years, 2010-2013. Participating institutions, apart from Umeå University, include Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany), and University West of England (The United Kingdom). Belgian company Space Applications Services and French company Robosoft are also participating in the project.