United Arab Emirates University
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- Offer Profile
- In its first year of
operation, the IRML lab has won many distinguished awards:
First, it has received distinguished award funding from Microsoft, for the
“Facebots” project that it proposed. IRML was one of eight labs worldwide to
receive this prestigious award, out of eighty in total that applied, and was
the only lab outside the Americas; the others were from MIT, CMU, McGill,
Yale and other such leading universities.
Product Portfolio
Mission
- The mission of the lab is threefold: Education,
Research, and Culture.
First and foremost, Education – the lab aspires to provide an
exciting and inspiring constructionist educational environment for students.
Many senior projects of students are taking place here, and also
international students from famous institutes (Siemens-Nixdorf in Germany,
Carnegie Mellon in the US) have taken part in the summer schools that we are
organizing.
Furthermore, the lab has provided internships for students from other UAE
educational institutes – such as HCT.
Second part of the mission, is Research. Our student projects have
already created research papers accepted to International Conferences (such
as the “Smart MutHaf” Virtual Museum project) – and apart from student
projects, our faculty research projects (“FaceBots” and “IbnSina”) have
already received worldwide media attention.
Last but not least, the third part of our mission: Culture. The
“Smart MutHaf” virtual museum project aims at preserving the traditional
culture of the emirates and exposing it through virtual worlds to young
people and to the whole world; and the “IbnSina” project also aims at
bringing attention to the unique muslim polymath, who was able to excel not
only in Islamic studies but also in philosophy, mathematics, science and
medicine – an amazing role model for our students.
Equipment And Fields Of Activity
- The fields of activity of the lab are threefold:
Robots (mainly interactive robots), Media (mainly interactive characters and
virtual worlds), and Creative/Enabling technologies.
The lab is equipped with latest state-of-the-art instruments: Numerous
robots, like the mindstorms robots, (based on ideas originating at the MIT
Media Lab), the ST robotics industrial arm robot, and the “Peoplebot” tour
guide robot – which has ultrasound sensors, laser ranging, vision, speech
synthesis as well as recognition – and which we are using for the
Microsoft-award-winning “FaceBots” project, and which we have also equipped
with a human face detection and recognition system that was developed in
IRML. Apart from robots, we have many types of sensors, so that we can know
exactly what the humans that are near the robots are doing; these include a
six-camera motion capture system for detecting body movements and
eye-tracking systems. Finally, the lab has numerous powerful workstations as
well as a 3D scanner and 3D printer.
You are looking forward to showing you around in person!
Faculty research projects:
-
Facebots
- Robots utilizing and publishing social information in
FaceBook
Projected selected and funded by Microsoft External Research as part of
Social Robotics CFP
Our Vision: Meaningful Human-Robot Relationships.
A narrative describing the project in layman's terms, in five simple
steps:
S1) Human-Robot Relationships
S2) A question: How can we make Human-Robot relationships become natural,
useful & satisfying?
S3) The Problem: Robots are so cool…but boredom sets in too early!
S4) A question: What is missing ?
S5) Our proposal: How do we start getting there ?
...Or, to sum up, in the form of a simple equation, our solution is:
IbnSina Robot: First Arabic-Speaking Humanoid Robot
- Ultimate Mission of the IbnSINA center:
To achieve harmonious and mutually beneficial co-existence (symbiosis)
between the natural (humans), the artificial (robots), and the virtual
(virtual agents), and to support seamless integration between the physical
and virtual worlds.
Conceptual foundation:
Two Worlds, Three Species, One Concept
The boundary of two Worlds: Physical and Virtual
The interaction between three Species: Humans, Robots, and Virtual Agents
The binding element - one Concept: Symbiosis - the harmonious and mutually
beneficial living together of unlike species IbnSina: The world's first Arabic-speaking Humanoid
Robot