Dr. Stefano Borgo, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC), Trento, Italy, will present the Department of Computer Science colloquium with a talk entitled, "Ontology for robotics". 

Abstract:

Robotics is a traditional research area which is rapidly expanding due to the ongoing exploitation of intelligent autonomous agents (like self-driving cars, drones, industrial robots for production and humanoids for the elderly). The lecture focuses on the role of ontology to provide the robot the knowledge needed to act in an environment. The focus is on how to "understand" a generic scenario and how to organize knowledge. The flow of information between the knowledge module and the planning and scheduling modules in a generic artificial agent is presented.

Note: this is a shorter version, and section of, the ESSLLI 2018 course [more information: http://esslli2018.folli.info/logic-ontology-and-planning-the-robots-knowledge/]

Speaker bio:

I studied math at the University of Padua (Bachelor), logic at Indiana University (Master) and knowledge representation at the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen (PhD).

My research develops in the areas of information and social systems where logic, artificial intelligence and cognitive science overlap. I like to start with an ontological approach to clarify the domain and to identify the problem. You can see this, for example, in my work on engineering function and product modeling and, in a different way, on space representation. In general, I like to work with people with different backgrounds because I'm attracted to interdisciplinary topics.

I've given tens of invited talks at conferences and universities. Typically, people ask me to talk about applied ontology and how it can be used in some domain or context. I've been active in about 30 national and international projects. As most people, I didn't like all of them but they often spark some interesting problem to think about. Today I'm in the Editorial Board of the journal Applied Ontology. member of the Advisory Board of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA) and in the Steering committee of several conference/workshop series.

Borgo’s home page http://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/people/borgo