Damith Herath & David St-Onge Eds.
Foundations of Robotics
A Multidisciplinary Approach with Python and ROS
“This book provides the ‘foundation’ for understanding how robots work. It is the accessible introduction that artists and engineers have been waiting for.”
– Ken Goldberg, William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley.
Robots are hiding in plain sight among us! Whether it’s a self-driving car, a vacuum cleaner or a service robot delivering your next meal. Robotics is a fast-changing discipline that’s no longer just engineering. It has implications across society and the economy, and challenges social norms. What do you know about our robotics future? How do you feel about collaborating with a robot? Join us for an enlightening, entertaining and wide-ranging conversation about robotics with some leading thinkers. Seperate the hype from the facts and see where robotics is heading and what it means for our way of life.
Monday
21, November
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Questacon
Japan Theatre, Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre
Ngunawal Country
King Edward Terrace
Canberra ACT 2600
THE PANEL
Dr Sue Keay – Recognised as one of Queensland’s most influential people (The Courier Mail’s Power100), Sue is an experienced R&D leader with a focus on robotic technologies that build community and generate impact. She’s an adjunct Professor at QUT, and the Founder and Chair of Robotics Australia Group, representing the robotics industry in Australia. a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE). She was the inaugural CEO of Queensland AI Hub. Recognised by SME on their global list of 20 women making their mark in robotics and automation in 2021, as an outstanding contributor to the drone and robotics industry (2020) and as a Superstar of STEM by Science & Technology Australia.
Dr Elizabeth Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Cybernetics at Australian National University (ANU). She completed her PhD in experimental nuclear structure at Yale University in December 2009, did postdoctoral work in fundamental and applied nuclear physics at Yale and CSIRO, and joined the ANU in 2012, where she held an ARC DECRA fellowship. She has created and used cyber-physical systems to carry out her research in nuclear science, and has always had a fascination with how complex systems come together in a human context. Her passion for research impact and the responsibilities that researchers have to imagine the context in which their research will be used led her to the 3A Institute (now part of the School of Cybernetics), where she is currently working on establishing cybernetics as an essential tool for helping complex systems scale safely, responsibly and sustainably. She is the creator and co-host of the Algorithmic Futures Podcast, and the manager of the Algorithmic Futures Policy Lab.
Bhante Sujato – A former musician with the post-punk Alternative rock Australian band Martha’s Vineyard, who had toured with, amongst others, Simply Red, INXS, Eurythmics, and proto-punk garage band The Saints before disbanding in 1990, Sujato became a monk in 1994 in the ascetic Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah, a religious order which encourages a life of contemplation and meditation. He took Upasampadā higher ordination in Thailand and lived there for years before returning to Australia. In 2019, Bhante Sujato moved to Sydney to establish Lokanta Vihara (the Monastery at the End of the World) with his long-term student, Bhante Akaliko, to explore what it means to follow the Buddha’s teachings in an era of climate change, globalised consumerism, and political turmoil. Sujato aligns himself with anarcho-pacifism, which he explains as being compatible with Buddhist lay and renunciant life, as well as being in accord with the monastic vinaya.
Massimiliano (Max) Cappuccio is a senior researcher in the Trusted Autonomy group and a member of the AI Hub at the School of Engineering and Information Technology of UNSW Canberra. His research in human performance and human-machine interaction attempts to combine different embodied approaches to cognition. As a cognitive philosopher and a technology ethicist, his research on intelligent systems is interdisciplinary and aims to integrate phenomenological analyses, empirical experimentation, and synthetic modelling. His current research focuses on skill acquisition and disruption, social-robotics, theory and ethics of artificial intelligence and the sociocultural and psychological autonomous systems. He conducts an intense activity as an organizer of academic events, including interdisciplinary workshops, research seminar series, and international conferences (like the TEMPER workshop on Training, Enhancement, and Military Performance and the annual Joint UAE Symposium on Social Robotics and the recent Long Road Ahead research seminar series on autonomous vehicles).
The Conversation is moderated by Dr Will Grant – Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU. Awarded for his public policy and outreach work, Will has authored or co-authored dozens of works in various scholarly outlets (including Public Understanding of Science, Environmental Communication, Computers in Human Behaviour, Scientometrics and Higher Education Policy), and written commissioned and pitched articles and opinion pieces in high impact public facing outlets (including The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Conversation, Times Higher Education, The Canberra Times, The Brisbane Times, Crikey, The Drum, Climate Spectator and ABC Environment), focusing mostly on the interaction of science, politics and technology. He is a co-founder of the researcher employment service PostAc.
Will is regularly heard on Radio National discussing science for Research Filter and Nightlife, as well as podcasting in The Wholesome Show, G’day Patriots and G’day Sausages, charting in the Australian iTunes top 50. Will has held science communication workshops for a range of Australia’s leading science organisations, including Universities Australia, Science and Technology Australia and the Australian Academy of Science, as well has dozens of universities and research institutes, government departments and scientific societies around the country. He tweets at @willozap.
The event will also feature “Judy”, the art installation by choreographer Melanie Lane and the socially interactive Pepper Robot by SoftBank Robotics.
The event is co-hosted by Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre and Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Canberra with generous support from Bluerydge.
