Roboticist Andrea Thomaz gives us an under-the-hood peak at what is coming in the field of Robotics where robots will eventually be able to function and collaborate with humans as naturally as humans do with each other in social situations.
Andrea Thomaz knows robots. Her work developing robots that don’t need programming to perform every task and that can collaborate side by side with humans as assistants, domestic help, etc. has been recognized by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. Her work with social robots “Simon” and “Curi” has been featured in the New York Times and on NOVA Science Now.
In 2012, Thomaz was named to Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” and she was named an “Innovator under 35” by MIT Technology Review in 2009. She is an Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Tech and director of the Socially Intelligent Machines lab. She earned a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, and Sc.M. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 2002 and 2006. Thomaz has published in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Human-Robot Interaction.