Research interests

Estela Bicho’s homepage

University of Minho

Engineering School

Dept. Industrial Electronics

Centre Algoritmi

Dept. Electrónica Industrial

Research interests

Dynamical systems & Dynamic Neural field theory

Cognitive Robotics:

Natural human-robot interaction

Human-robot interaction and coordination

robots capable of action understanding and goal inference

goal-directed imitation learning

robots capable of learning to read the motor intention of others

development of learning schemes for social robotic systems

Anthropomorphic robotic systems:

Human like shape and movement

Multi-robot systems:

Cooperative Object transportation

Cooperative object search

Formation control (2D and 3D)

My research deals with the development of neuro-cognitive inspired architectures to endow autonomous robots with some cognitive capacities like decision making, memory, goal inference, action understanding and anticipation. A concrete and recent example is a Dynamic Neural Field based control architecture for more natural human-robot interaction that we have developed in the context of Integrated European Project JAST (“Joint Action Science and Technology”). Videos of the Minho robot in joint action with a human user can be found at

http://staging.esn.eu/projects/ICT-Results/Success_stories.html

http://dei-s1.dei.uminho.pt/pessoas/estela/JASTvideos.htm

http://dei-s1.dei.uminho.pt/pessoas/estela/JASTVideosFneurorobotics.htm