Mary Ellen Foster (University of Glasgow)

Mary Ellen Foster’s research focuses on developing artificial agents—primarily robots—that can engage in natural, face-to-face conversations with humans, similar to well-known examples like C-3PO or R2-D2. To achieve such seamless interactions, robots must be equipped to both interpret and produce a variety of social signals, including speech, facial expressions, gestures, and body language. This requires a multi-step approach: first, observing and analyzing human social behaviors across different situations; second, creating computational models of these behaviors for use in both perception and response generation; and finally, testing the performance of these models in real-world human-robot interactions.

This course 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.