Agnieszka Wykowska (The Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa), “Using humanoid robots to study human cognition”

Humanoid robots have recently received a lot of attention and enthusiasm in the robotics community and beyond. Indeed, with new technological advancements, they hold the promise to become our assistants in daily lives, as general-purpose machines. In this talk, however, Agnieszka Wykowska will focus on a different, less explored, way of using humanoids – as tools to understand human cognition. Humanoids can play a substantial role in the scientific understanding of human cognition, both through the construction of embodied models of cognitive mechanisms, and in the role of sophisticated apparatus in experimental paradigms. Agnieszka Wykowska will present the work of her lab where they have examined how fundamental mechanisms of human cognition, such as attention, decision making or sense of agency, are modulated by the interaction with a humanoid. She will then demonstrate how results from such studies can be used in robot-assisted cognitive training for children with disabilities, highlighting the role of fundamental science in applied research.

This talk will take place as part of SCIoI member Jonas Frenkel’s seminar “Artificial Social Intelligence.” It aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of ASI, which involves the observation, analysis, and synthesis of social phenomena. It integrates synthetic sciences such as machine learning, computer vision, and robotics with cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, and the humanities to focus on the perception, cognitive components, and behaviors linked to social intelligence.

Photo by Zak on Unsplash.