Researchers

Born: 1980 From: Tehran, Iran

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2012

What is your general research focus?
Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
The possibility of applying novel reasoning techniques upon numeric data to increase interactions between the data or modules only working with the data (such as data-classifier or motion planner) and the semantic layers coming from online sources.

What is your role in the project?
Post-doctor in Research Direction 1

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
So far, placing myself in a community with the same and specific research concern.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Reading books, playing games with friends, and watching movies.

Born: 1975 From: Urmia, Iran

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2011

What is your general research focus?
Real-Time Systems, Synchronization and Scheduling Real-Time Systems on Multi-cores, Scheduling and Coordination of Autonomous Vehicles.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
n general, very interesting R&D challenges in collaboration with industrial partners where it makes possible to do applied research. In particular designing, implementing, and verifying algorithms and protocols for autonomous vehicles.

What is your role in the project?
Develop efficient algorithms for coordination of autonomous vehicles with regard to some objectives, e.g., minimize the overall blocking time of vehicles.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
Design a new synchronization algorithm for Real-Time Systems on Multi-cores.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Family & friends, movies & series, reading, running, gym.

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Born: 1983 From: Örebro, Sweden

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2010

What is your general research focus?
Machine learning and deep learning

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
To make robots that are more intelligent than humans.

What is your role in the project?
Post-doc

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
I have published a few articles.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Spending time with friends and family.

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Born: 1980 From: Lucerne, Switzerland

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2012

What is your general research focus?
To study novel vision-based methods for robustly detecting and tracking humans from manned or unmanned mobile platforms.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
The large variety of interconnected research questions that need to be addressed when working on autonomous systems.

What is your role in the project?
I am a post-doctoral researcher and focus on the important safety aspect around autonomous vehicles that operate in close proximity to humans.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
The defence of my PhD thesis.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Dancing, cooking and exploring nature.

Born: 1977 From: Rome, Italy

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2003

What is your general research focus?
Artificial Intelligence, planning, scheduling, constraint-based reasoning, hybrid reasoning, multi-robot coordination, integration of reasoning and control.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
AI has the potential to provide robotics with an essential feature, namely that of reducing or even eliminating the need to program robots. Thus, AI can drastically reduce the time needed to customize robot platforms for use in different applications, as well as significantly widen the scope of applicability of robotics and intelligent systems. Semantic Robots aims to develop general, robust and portable AI solutions for this pusrpose, and is grounded on a core set of industrially-relevant applications provided by our industrial partners. My ambition is that, upon completion, Semantic Robots will contribute methods, techniques and tools that will prove fundamental for the uptake of robotic technology in the future.

What is your role in the project?
Project leader and leader of Research Direction 3.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
Bridging the gap between roboticists and AI researchers, eliciting challenging basic research questions from applications.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Traveling, savouring good food, experiencing other cultures, playing the electric bass, reading and watching sci-fi.

Born: 1977 From: Gothenburg, Sweden

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2003

What is your general research focus?
Perception – how to make sense of sensory data, especially various of cameras and time of flight sensor such as lidars.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
The possibility to do multidisciplinary research. It is a great team; the researchers and all dedicated R&D fellows we have from all the companies, are fantastic to work with.

What is your role in the project?
I’m leading Research Direction 2 and I assist Federico in managing the project.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
To get machines to move, in real world and harsh conditions. Well… that is at least one of the fun parts.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Spending time with friends and family. I do enjoy flying various of things and I still have my church organ at my house but don’t find much time these days.

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Born: 1979 From: Wellington, New Zealand

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2012

What is your general research focus?
Robotic Vision and Navigation

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
Working with some fantastic companies.

What is your role in the project?
My goal is to develop a visual navigation system for a robot using consumer-grade sensors that is capable of operating long-term in an outdoor and frequently changing environment.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
My greatest success so far has been synthesizing the work of many researchers into a survey of the current state-of-the-art for visual place recognition. This survey was published by the IEEE and has been downloaded from the website more than 2000 times this year.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Exploring the beautiful Swedish outdoors.

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Born: 1968 From: Halmstad, Sweden

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 1994

What is your general research focus?
Planning for robotic systems.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
Task allocation and planning for fleets of vehicles.

What is your role in the project?
Working with task allocation and coordination for Kollmorgen.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
Helping graduate students to become researchers.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Kids, cats, reading, video games, cooking, blogging.

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Born: 1985 From: Tehran, Iran

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2009

What is your general research focus?
My main research interest is to employ artificial intelligence techniques in autonomous mobile robots, with a particular focus on the use of hybrid knowledge representation and reasoning and meta constraint-based reasoning.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
I have the opportunity to apply artificial intelligence techniques in real industrial robotic applications. This poses very challenging problems which I am enthusiastic to tackle.

What is your role in the project?
Post-doc researcher working in Research Direction 3, i.e., multi-vehicle planing and coordination of industrial autonomous vehicles.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
My overall passion is to work towards the realization of fully AI-driven integrated robotic systems. This requires a broad perspective on robotic systems, and being able to read/discuss various disciplines in robotics and AI. Semantic Robots gives me the possibility to develop important skills in this direction.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Reading books and newspapers (totally obsessed with reading), playing guitar and drums, painting, visiting friends.

Born: 1983 From: Örebro (Sweden), Kyoto (Japan), Moscow (Russia) – in a reciprocal chronological order.

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2008 (formally) or since 1983 (practically)

What is your general research focus?
Creating, observing, and analyzing multi-modal interactions between humans and robots.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
The interdisciplinarity of research topics and the possibility to collaborate close with industry.

What is your role in the project?
Researcher, developer.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
For me, being an active researcher is a success by itself. It includes many different kinds and aspects of success. Many little pieces in developing interactive robots, experimenting, publishing, attracting funding all together contribute to the success of being a researcher.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
I like to spend time with my family, traveling and having fun together. Also, I play volleyball from time to time and build bicycles.

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Born: 1977 From: Troyes, France

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 1977

What is your general research focus?
AI for Robotics

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
It’s challenging application domain for my research interests: long plans for huge machines in large environments!

What is your role in the project?
Post-doc researcher, my focus is the planning of sequences of paths for automated drilling machines.

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
To avoid embarrassing questions.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Trying to read all the Internet pages (but it’s getting difficult!), Table Tennis, Roleplaying, Movies…

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Born: 1978 From: Saint John, Canada

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2001

What is your general research focus?
Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition and Human Robot Interaction.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
The ability to make complex intelligent systems that can use semantic information to reason about what it perceives and to interact with humans.

What is your role in the project?
Leader of Research Direction 1

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
For me research is about the researchers. It is about getting a team of creative people together and focussing our energy to solve problems, which have yet to be solved. To be able to lead research teams is to me a great accomplishment but also a wonderful privilege.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Spending time with friends and family, drinking coffee and watching good movies.

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Born: 1983 From: Guilin, China

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2010

What is your general research focus?
Fuzzy systems, computer vision, and telerobotics.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
I can learn a lot of new things from the team.
The research in the project is fun, it offers me the opportunity to give eyes to robots.

What is your role in the project?
Researcher

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
I have published academic papers in good journals. Especially, the first achievement in computer vision I got has been published in the topmost journal of this area (IEEE TPAMI).

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Drawing, reading and traveling.

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Born: 1990 From: Livorno, Italy

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2016

What is your general research focus?
Autonomous navigation, planning, constraint-based reasoning, multi-robot coordination, integration of reasoning and control.

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
1. Its holistic approach to robot research (and in particular to multi-robot management).
2. The aim of combining robotics and AI tools to bridge the gap between theory and applications. 

What is your role in the project?
Researcher

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
Having a systemic view of problems, creating connections between people and between topics, developing tools together with formal verifications.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Running, swimming, hiking, climbing, cooking cakes, singing, playing games and enjoying with friends.

Born: 1990 From: Beer-Sheva, Israel

How many years have you been a researcher?
Since 2016

What is your general research focus?
Vision and perception in complex outdoor environments

What interests you the most about the Semantic Robotics project?
Industrial opportunities, cutting edge research, real-world problems, access to interesting hardware.

What is your role in the project?
Researcher

What is your greatest success as a researcher?
Taking part and leading interdisciplinary research leading to complex innovative research questions requiring unique domain knowledge.

How do you like to spend your time (hobbies, etc.)?
Give me a city with a good art museum or a mountain to hike and I am happy. Photography is a new craze of mine, slowly turning into an astro-photography hobby, supported by the access to the Swedish northern lights.