When: Thursday, 11th of August, 1:00PM AEDT
Where: This seminar will be partially presented at the ACFR seminar area, J04 lvl 2 (Rose St Building) and partially online via Zoom. RSVP
Speaker: Prof. Adriana Tapus
Abstract:
Social robots are becoming increasingly present in our daily lives, and the design of their behaviors greatly affects the way people interact with them. To ensure optimal engagement, long-term adaptation and the personalization of a robot’s behavior to the user’s specific needs and profile should be envisaged. This presentation will explore innovative perception and interaction capabilities and address the challenges raised by inter-individual differences and intra-individual variability over time. Several studies that highlight these aspects and demonstrate the importance of personalized robotic interactions will be discussed.
Bio:
Adriana Tapus is Full Professor in the Autonomous Systems and Robotics Lab in the Computer Science and System Engineering Department (U2IS), at ENSTA, part of IP Paris (QS=46), France. In 2011, she obtained the French Habilitation (HDR) for her thesis entitled “Towards Personalized Human-Robot Interaction”. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland in 2005 and her degree of Engineer in Computer Science and Engineering from Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania in 2001. She worked as an Associate Researcher at the University of Southern California (USC), where she was among the pioneers on the development of socially assistive robotics, also participating to activity in machine learning, human sensing, and human-robot interaction. Her main interests are on long-term learning (i.e. in particular in interaction with humans), human modeling, and on-line robot behavior adaptation to external environmental factors. Prof. Tapus is an Associate Editor for International Journal of Social Robotics (IJSR), Senior Editor for Intenational Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) and Chief-in-Editor for Frontiers in Robotics HRI topic, and in the steering committee of several major robotics conferences (General Chair 2019 of HRI, Program Chair 2018 of HRI, General Chair 2017 of ECMR, Program Chair ICSR 2025, International Advisory Board ICSR 2026). She received the Romanian Academy Award for her contributions in assistive robotics in 2010. She was elected in 2016 as one of the 25 women in robotics you need to know about. She is also the PI of various EU and French National research grants. She received several awards for her research (e.g., Finalist of Best Paper Award IROS 2025). She has more than 300 research publications and she is listed for the fifth consecutive year among the World’s Top 2% Scientists. In 2025, she was elected Honorary Member of the Academy of Technical Sciences in Romania. Further details about her research and her activities can be found at http://www.ensta-paristech.fr/~tapus.