Fall 2022 GRASP SFI: Sonia Chernova, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Semantic-Driven Robot Assistance and User Interaction”

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom.

ABSTRACT

Reliable operation in everyday human environments – homes, offices, and businesses – remains elusive for today’s robotic systems.  A key challenge is diversity, as no two homes or businesses are exactly alike.  However, despite the innumerable unique aspects of any home, there are many commonalities as well, particularly about how objects are placed and used.  These commonalities can be captured in semantic representations, and then used to improve the autonomy of robotic systems by, for example, enabling robots to infer missing information in human instructions, efficiently search for objects, or manipulate objects more effectively.  This talk will discuss recent advances in semantic reasoning, particularly focusing on semantics of everyday objects, household environments, and the development of robotic systems that intelligently interact with users.