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Professor Dana Kulić develops autonomous systems that can operate in concert with humans, using natural and intuitive interaction strategies while learning from user feedback to improve and individualise operation over long-term use. In collaboration with Professor Elizabeth Croft, she pioneered systems to quantify and control safety during HRI based on both robot and human perception. Working with Professor Yoshihiko Nakamura at the University of Tokyo, she developed one of the first systems to implement continuous learning from demonstration. The system was a first step towards robots that can learn from non-experts, as it did not require the demonstrator to segment or scaffold their demonstration.

Her research in rehabilitation technology enables highly accurate, non-invasive, measurement of human movement, which can be deployed in industrial settings for accurate measurement of operator movement. She serves as the Global Innovation Research Visiting Professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and the August-Wilhelm Scheer Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich. 

Professor Hatice Gunes is a Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics at University of Cambridge's Department of Computer Science and Technology. Prior to joining Cambridge in 2016, she was a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, and an honorary associate of University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Her research interests are in the areas of affective computing and social signal processing that lie at the crossroad of multiple disciplines including, computer vision, signal processing, machine learning, multimodal interaction and human-robot interaction. She has authored more than 125 papers in these areas ( > 6,000 citations, H-index=35).

Her current research vision is to embrace the challenges present in the area of health and empower the lives of people through creating socio-emotionally intelligent technology. This vision is currently supported by three new projects funded by prestigious and competitive grants via the WorkingAge Project funded by the EU H2020 Programme (2019–2022), the EPSRC Fellowship Programme (2019–2024) and the Turing Faculty Fellowship Programme (2019-2022). 

Prof. Adriana Tapus obtained the French Habilitation (HDR) for her thesis entitled “Towards Personalized Human-Robot Interaction” from Sorbonne University, France in 2011. 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 in long-term learning (i.e. in particular in interaction with humans), human modeling, and on-line robot behavior adaptation to external environmental factors. She is currently a Full Professor in the Autonomous Systems and Robotics Lab in the Computer Science and System Engineering Department (U2IS), at ENSTA Paris, France. Prof. Tapus is an Associate Editor for International Journal of Social Robotics (IJSR), ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), and IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (TCDS) 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). She has more than 200 research publications and 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’s also the PI of various EU and French National research grants.  And in February 2022, she was nominated Knight for the Academic Palms by the French Prime Minister.

Dr. Johnathan Mell is an Assistant Professor at University of Central Florida. His lab at the University of Central Florida brings together computer science, interactive experience design, cognitive science, and business.  I’m part of UCF’s cross-disciplinary “Faculty Cluster Initiative” as a member of the Learning Sciences Cluster. He developed IAGO: Interactive Arbiration Guide Online.  IAGO is a research platform for designing human-aware negotiating agents.  It is used by AI researchers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and even clinicians.

Professor Song Aiguo is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor at the College of Instrument Science and Engineering. He is serving as Director of the Key Laboratory of Remote Measurement and Control Technology of Jiangsu Province and Director of the Institute of Robot Sensing and Control Technology. Up to now, he has presided over 45 major projects including national key R&D projects, National 973 Program, National 863 High-tech Program, key projects and general projects sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation, Manned Space Mission 921 Pre-research Project, etc.. He once visited the Laboratory for Intelligent Mechanical System of Northwestern University. Besides, he won the second prize for National Technology Invention as the first person-in-charge, two first prizes for technical invention by the Ministry of Education and two first prizes for science and technology progress of Jiangsu Province. Up to now, he has published more than 280 academic papers, including more than 160 SCI papers, more than 1,500 SCI papers, more than 100 invention patents granted, and drafted 4 standards for national special robot. He was awarded “Top Ten Outstanding Inventor Award of Jiangsu Province”, the “First Innovation Pioneer Medal of Jiangsu Province”, and the “Young and Middle-aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions in Jiangsu Province”. Professor Song Aiguo is the winner of National Outstanding Youth Fund, the winner of China Youth Science and Technology Award, the winner of Young College Teacher Award of the Ministry of Education, National Outstanding Science and Technology Worker, renowned national teacher for “Tens of Thousands of Talents Program”, and the national candidate for “New Century Millions of Talents Program”, Distinguished Professor of Jiangsu Province and Chief Professor of Southeast University. He is a member of the Scientific Application and Research Experts Committee of China's Circumlunar Exploration Program under National Defense Science and Technology Commission, a member of theManned Lunar-Landing Major Special Projects of the General Armament Department (GAD), an expert of the pre-research expert team for manned space technology of GAD, and a member of the National Special Robotics Standards Committee. Besides, he won 2 second prizes for national teaching achievements as the first person-in-charge, 1 provincial special prize, 2 first prizes and 1 second prize for teaching achievements. 

Xiaofeng Liu holds a Ph.D. in Bemidical Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2006, and B.A. in Electronics Engineering and MSc in Computer Science from Taiyuan University of Technology in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He is currently a professor of Department of Telecommunications at Hohai University, China, where he is the leader of Cognition and robotics Laboratory, the director of the joint laboratory of Aldebaran Robotics and Hohai University, and the vice director of Changzhou key laboratory of Robotics and Intelligent Technology. He has undertaken more than 8 grants as PI, and more than 10 grants as researcher, including the national key R&D programmes,  the national high-tech R&D program (863), the national bsic rsearch pogram (973). He has served as the chair of Sino-Russia bilateral symposium on animal magnetic navigation and enviroment observation technologies, sponsored by NSFC and RFBR. Now his research interest focuses on the bionavigation from natural inspiration, social robotics, behavior observation and habitat monitoring with WSN and remote controlled robotic camera. He also served as the AE of IET cognitive computation and systems,  and editoral board of International Journal of artificial intelligence and consciousness,  and gest editor of Interaction studies, complexity, Assembly automation, Advances in mechanical engineering, Frontiers in robotics and AI.