SICSA Seminar – Dr Carl Strathearn presents AI-driven Humanoid Robots for Education

AI-driven Humanoid Robots for Education: Insights from UK Rapid Technology Assessments with Dr Carl Strathearn

Abstract:

AI-driven humanoid robots are gradually moving out of laboratories and into factories around the world. However, more challenging domains such as education, domestic environments, and healthcare are significantly more unpredictable and difficult to evaluate in terms of effectiveness, social interaction, and risk.

Last year, Dr Strathearn contributed to the development of two rapid technology assessments published by the UK Government Office for Science on humanoid and AI-driven robots. These reports examined the feasibility and challenges of deploying such systems in their current state to help inform policymakers across government. In this talk, he will provide a deep dive into the current state of the art in humanoid robotics, covering large language models (LLMs), vision-language models (VLMs), and emerging vision-language-action (VLA) models, and discuss some of the key challenges involved in deploying this technology in education going forward.

Dr Carl Strathearn is a lecturer in computer science and researcher in AI and humanoid robots at Edinburgh Napier University.

This seminar will be hybrid from Edinburgh Napier University’s Merchiston Campus. Register to receive meeting link.