Workshop in Complex Cyber Physical Systems

The Workshop in Complex Cyber Physical Systems is taking place on Wednesday 27th June in room EM 2.44, Heriot-Watt University. Please see below for the full schedule.
With this workshop we will bring together interested students, academics and industrials from the field of Complex Cyber Physical Systems. Overall the workshop will try to discuss the human factor in cyber physical systems, bridging from social signals to IoT systems. A primary focus is to discuss novel quantitative and qualitative methodologies to systematically quantify the predictive ability of cyber physical systems in the interface with humans. For this purpose, we will bring together researchers and students from multiple Scottish as well as British Universities on cutting edge research in complex cyber physical systems.

Schedule 27.06.2018 13:00-17:00

13:00-13:30 Welcome with coffee and biscuits
13:30-14:15 Prof. Alessandro Vinciarelli (University of Glasgow)
14:15-15:00 Associate Prof. Dr. Serge Thill (University of Plymouth)
15:00-15:30 John Perry (Denchi Power)
15:30-16:15 Assistant Prof. Suphi Erden (HWU)
16:15-17:00 Assistant Prof. Mauro Dragone (HWU)

Abstracts/Titles of the talks:

Body Language Without Body: Social Signals in Technology Mediated Communication (Prof. Vinciarelli)

Nonverbal communication is a natural phenomenon that takes place in face-to-face interactions. However, an increasingly significant fraction of our social exchanges takes place in technology mediated settings where natural nonverbal cues (facial expressions, vocalisations, gestures, posture, etc.) are partially or totally impossible to display and access. For example, phones make it possible to use vocal cues (fillers, laughter, pauses, etc.), but not facial expressions or gestures and, in the case of online textual chats, the use of nonverbal cues is simply not possible. The question at the core of this talk is whether nonverbal communication still plays a role in these settings and, if yes, what are the nonverbal cues and their functions.

Cyberphysical systems and us (Associate Prof. Thill)

For the largest part, the complex, and sometimes autonomous, systems that we design are designed to interact with humans. In some cases, such as in social robotics, this is very obvious. In others, the connection is not as direct but still present, such as in autonomous vehicles (that need to interact both with other road users and the passangers they carry). It is therefore important that such systems are designed not just with technical abilities, but also with the humans that they interact with in mind. This talk will present a brief overview of recent research in this area. We'll start by considering aspects of human cognition particularly relevant to such interactions - including the role of diverse aspects such as kinematics, gaze, theory of mind, and the human ability to project mental states even on inanimate objects. The second part of the talk then gives an overview of social robots and other interactive automated technologies that build on these insights, with applications ranging from therapeutic robots to autonomous vehicles.

Internet of Robotic Things (Assistant Prof. Dragone)

The IoT (Internet of Things) and Robotics communities have produced highly complementary approaches that have so far been driven by different objectives, one focused on enabling pervasive sensing and interoperability, the other on producing action and interaction. It is increasingly claimed that the integration of results from the two communities and the creation of an Internet of Robotic Thing (IoRT) will bring a strong added value to both, and that AI and cognition are key enablers for this integration. Before we engage into a serious integration effort, we need to be more precise about both the added value and the needed enablers. In this talk, I will provide an overview of relevant research and roadmapping activities. I will highlight some of the scientific challenges posed by the creation of open IoRT ecosystems, and present use cases from past and current projects in different application domains: From ambient assisted living, to Industry 4.0, to sensor and robot networks employed in the offshore oil and gas industry.