Social and Interactive AI

Conversational AI enables humans and computers to communicate clearly and effectively through speech or text. Systems such as chatbots and voice assistants are used across a wide variety industries ranging from customer service to triaging medical symptoms. Although the best existing platforms can create human-like interactions, they lack in flexibility and in understanding of the social system and the world we live in. Achieving fully natural conversations is an important AI challenge that can benefit from insights from humanities, cognitive and social sciences.

Affective AI enables machines to understand human feelings and emotions. Because emotions play an integral role in communication, decision making, learning, and other areas of human life, AI should learn to recognise and express them appropriately. Encompassing multiple disciplines (computer science, sociology, psychology, physiology and others), the development of affective AI is challenging and can truly benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration. Emotion-enhanced AI has important applications in many sectors, including healthcare, education, entertainment, advertising and others.

Interactive systems engineering builds machines that enable people to be more creative, expressive and satisfied in their daily lives. It integrates technologies for inclusive, augmentative and alternative forms of communication. Involving multiple disciplines (sociology, psychology, physiology, cognitive sciences and others), the development of social and interactive AI can truly benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration. This area has numerous important applications in healthcare, education, entertainment, advertising and other sectors of human life.

Human-centered robotics places humans in the centre of robotics development, investigating natural, dynamic, trustworthy and energy-efficient interaction between humans and robots. Intelligent robots can play an important role in supporting humans in education, health, entertainment and other areas of life, as well as in assisting them in dangerous tasks (e.g., search and rescue operations in a hazardous environment). Addressing human social and physical needs, these robots rely on human-centered robot design, sensing technologies, and physics- and biologically-inspired learning approaches. Research in this area is strongly interdisciplinary.