Title: Cognitive Resonance: Toward Human-Compatible Autonomous Robots
Abstract: As autonomous robots are envisioned to increasingly operate in human environments, effective interaction requires more than accurate perception, control, and task execution. Robots must also develop cognitive processes that are compatible with the ways humans perceive, predict, and understand others. In this keynote, I will introduce cognitive resonance as a framework for human–robot interaction: a compatibility between the principles through which natural and artificial agents interpret behavior, generate expectations, and adapt to one another.
Drawing on research in cognitive robotics and embodied cognition, I will discuss how non-verbal communication, memory, prospection, and adaptation can be integrated into bio-inspired cognitive architectures. Examples will illustrate how robots can infer intentions and internal states from subtle behavioral cues, express their own intentions in legible ways, and co-adapt with human partners over time. This perspective positions cognitive robotics as a pathway from autonomous systems toward robots that are not only capable, but also understandable, adaptive, and cognitively compatible with humans.
Biography: Alessandra Sciutti is a Senior Tenure Track Researcher and head of the CONTACT (COgNiTive Architecture for Collaborative Technologies) Unit of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Bioengineering and her Ph.D. in Humanoid Technologies from the University of Genova in 2010. After two research periods in the USA and Japan, in 2018, she was awarded the ERC Starting Grant wHiSPER (www.whisperproject.eu), focused on the investigation of joint perception between humans and robots. She has published more than 100 papers and abstracts in international journals and conferences, coordinates the ERC POC Project ARIEL (Assessing Children Manipulation and Exploration Skills), and has participated in the coordination of the CODEFROR European IRSES project (https://www.codefror.eu/). She is currently Chief Editor of the HRI Section of Frontiers in Robotics and AI and Associate Editor for several journals, including the International Journal of Social Robotics and Cognitive System Research. She is an ELLIS scholar and the corresponding co-chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee for Cognitive Robotics. Her research aims to investigate the sensory and motor mechanisms underlying mutual understanding in human-human and human-robot interaction. For more details on her research and the full list of publications, please check the Contact Unit website or her Google Scholar profile.