Sobots news

Image credit: Lovisa Sundinnote (www.menimagerie.com)

Exciting new articles!

Congratulations to Anna, who’s timely piece on isolation can be read in The Gist here. And for co-authoring an article with Emily on the neuroscience of loneliness that was published in The Conversation here. Two excellent reads!

Artist Residency at the Social Brain in Action Lab

The SoBA Lab is collaborating with the Goethe Institute Glasgow to offer a 5-week residency for an artist to join the team. The selected artist will work alongside researchers to collaborate in creating art that is inspired by ongoing work in the Social Robots project. Submission deadline is 25th of March 2020 at 23:00 Uhr (GMT).

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HRI 2020 in Cambridge

Congrats to Te-Yi and Guy on their Late Breaking Reports for HRI 2020! They will present their latest research at the conference, so make sure to meet them there.

Human Brain Project Workshop

The Human Brain Project Curriculum visited the University of Glasgow for a 3-day workshop on “Modern trends in cognitive architectures and systems”, filled with interesting talks, tutorials and lab visits. Ruud presented some of his recent research and discussed the neurocognitive perspective on human-robot interaction. Thanks to Lars Muckli, Tony Prescott, and HBP Education for organising this event!

‘Loving Machines?’ Event

On Monday 18th November Katie was invited to speak at 'Loving Machines?' - an event exploring our future with robots, and the relationships we might form. In addition to giving a talk at Manchester Cathedral, Katie appeared in a series of short films exploring the topic, and answered questions as part of a panel of experts! Many thanks to Dr Scott Midson (University of Manchester and Lincoln Theological Institute) for the invite.

Radboud University Visit

Joined by the Social Human Agent Interactions group from Radboud University, Nijmegen and different groups from the University of Glasgow for an interesting day of talks from researchers at all levels!

New Technician!

Michaela has joined #teamSoBots as a research technician! We are very excited for her to join the team! She will be working with Ruud on the Bial Foundation funded project on anthropomorphism and dehumanisation entitled: “Blurring the line between human and robot? Mapping and manipulating the socialness gradient in the brain”. We are very thankful to the Bial Foundation for the funding.

Embodied Social Agents workshop

Ruud and Emily were part of the Embodied Social Agents workshop hosted at cSCAN. Together with an international group of researchers they discussed the future of embodiment for virtual social agents and conversational devices. Thanks to Stacy Marsella for organising!