Seed Meeting: EU-Japan Research Workshop on Robotics - “Introducing Roberta”

The French Embassy Science & Technology Department provided a full funding for all European delegates to participate in a 2-day EU-Japan Research Workshop on 10-11th March 2016.

Seed Meeting Robotics 10-11 March 2016

Hosted at the Embassy and led by Professor Atta Badii from the Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory, University Reading, working together with Professor Jerome Boudy from Institut Mines-Telecom Paris and Gérard Chollet Emeritus Researcher from CNRS and VP for Research at Intelligent Voice Ltd, this 2-day meeting brought together 20 scientists from academia and SMEs from several European countries.

The group also included leading Professors from key Research centres in Japan - the National Institute of Informatics (NII), The Nara Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Kyoto who linked online to participate in the meeting.

The group met for lunch at the Embassy on the Thursday 10th and worked through to dinner time and beyond to conclude the formulation of an EU-Japan joint Research Programme of which one of the first results will be a joint EU-Japan proposal focused on advanced Human-Computer Dialogue Systems.

On the second day 11th March the group started at 8:00 a.m. in readiness for their late afternoon (Japan time) link with their Japanese colleagues and successfully concluded their discussions with them through another conference call later in the afternoon London time (around mid-night Japan time).

On the second day the group also managed to formulate a second research proposal to be submitted under the H2020 Programme focused on pushing forward the frontiers of research in Human-Computer Dialogue Systems also on building on the advanced dialogue capabilities of “Roberta Ironside” as pioneered by Hugues Sansen of Shankaa Sarl, France (see picture and video).

Roberta Ironside

[Video] Roberta

(Windows Media Video - 8.4 Mb)

Professor Badii who led the EU-Japan Research Workshop commented that the “Team Ironside had found at the Embassy a most supportive environment to accomplish even more than planned”. He added that “the team much appreciated the funding of the event and above all the warm hospitality and support shown by the Science and Technology Department staff which had enabled excellent progress to be made through the workshop”.

The workshop was attended by research leaders from the following European and Japanese organisations:

1. University of Reading, UK
2. Institut Mines-Telecom, Paris, France
3. APHP : Assistance Publique, Hôpitaux de Paris, France
4. Intelligent Voice Ltd, UK
5. University of Helsinki, Finland
6. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain
7. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
8. Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Austria
9. University of Innsbruck, Austria
10. University of Eastern Finland, Finland
11. University of Naples, Italy
12. ELRA The European language Resources Association
13. Shankaa, Sarl, France
14. National Institute of Informatics Japan
15. Nara Institute of Science and Technology
16. University of Kyoto