Patricia Shaw
Understanding how babies learn to help robots learn

Background

I am a lecturer in Computer Science at Aberystwyth University, lecturing at MSc and UG level

The research we are doing is aiming to understand how humans learn starting from birth, and apply it to a robotic platform. This is really exciting because not only do we get to understand more about how our children develop, we get to use this knowledge to help the robot learn. By helping the robot to learn about how to move and interact with its environment, it is more likely to be able to deal with unexpected situations than if it was simply told what to do. We also aim to help psychologist better understand how and why certain behaviours develop in certain orders.

Previously, I worked as a research associate in the Intelligent Robotics Research Group at the University working on the IM-CLeVeR project. This was a 4 year FP7 funded project, involving 7 partners and 3 iCubs, one of which we have here at Aberystwyth.

I read for my batchelors degree in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Durham, graduating with a first class honours degree in 2005. I then received funding from the department of Computer Science, through the EPSRC Doctoral Training Fund, to stay on to research for my PhD in agent systems, graduating in 2010. I spent two years as a Teaching Fellow in the department teaching introductory programming modules as well as final year AI modules before moving over to Aberystwyth.

My research interests include various aspects of Artificial Intelligence for autonomous systems and robotics:

• Biologically inspired developmental robotics
• Autonomous agent goal based reasoning
• Machine learning