Event Location: NSH 3305
Bio: Michael Beetz is a professor for Computer Science at the Department of Informatics of the Technische Universität Muenchen and heads the Intelligent Autonomous Systems group. He is vice coordinator of the German national cluster of excellence CoTeSys (Cognition for Technical Systems) where he is also co-coordinator of the research area “Knowledge and Learning”.

Michael Beetz received his diploma degree in Computer Science with distinction from the University of Kaiserslautern. He received his MSc, MPhil, and PhD degrees from Yale University in 1993, 1994, and 1996 and his Venia Legendi from the University of Bonn in 2000. Michael Beetz was a member of the steering committee of the European network of excellence in AI planning (PLANET) and coordinating the research area “robot planning”. He is associate editor of the AI Journal. His research interests include plan-based control of robotic agents, knowledge processing and representation for robots, integrated robot learning, and cognitive perception.

Abstract: In recent years we have seen tremendous advances in the mechatronic, sensing and computational infrastructure of robots, enabling them to act faster, stronger and more accurately than humans do. Yet, when it comes to accomplishing manipulation tasks in everyday settings, robots often do not even reach the sophistication and performance of young children. Housework is an activity domain where the superiority of the human cognitive mechanisms and their role in competent activity control is particularly evident.

In this talk I will present our ongoing research, in which we investigate cognitive mechanisms that are to enable autonomous robots to produce flexible, reliable and high-performance behavior for everyday manipulation activities. The talk will concentrate on our framework for cognition-enabled control and the naturalistic specification of manipulation actions and what it takes to execute these specifications competently.