Varsity to host robotics symposium

The UAEU has long been an advocate for the development of robotics, with professors regularly speaking at — or hosting — workshops on the subject. For example, the UAEU has announced that on November 20-23, it will be hosting the second Joint UAE Symposium on Social Robotics.

With an emphasis on the social impact of robotics, this year’s symposium will see industry experts, educators and innovators discuss and dissect the ethical and social implications of robotics, such as codes of conduct, moral and legal obligations towards artificial companions and public policy.

“There is one field of cognitive science that is today very important and that is cognitive robotics — robots that try to approximate (simulate) the human mind,” noted Dr Massimiliano Cappuccio, associate professor of the UAEU’s Department of Philosophy. “In cognitive robotics, first of all you need to understand how the human mind works ... The purpose is to replicate these functions in an artificial agent.

“And there is a big effort in research and development around this. Of course we are still at the early stage and there are concerns — for example, about how robots can make decisions regarding ethical issues or decisions that can have ethical implications. The symposium aims to discuss these topics, and explore different approaches in social robotics.”