ALARIS team member Nazgul Tazhigaliyeva has participated in the Second Orebro Winter School on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics held in Orebro, Sweden, December 2014. The Orebro Winter Schools on AI and Robotics, also known as the “Lucia Schools”, are organised every year in the week of St. Lucia day – December 13th. This marks an important celebration in the Nordic Countries: the end of the period of shortening days and return of daylight. The Lucia schools aim at bringing more light in AI and Robotics fields by filling the educational gap between them, as today they are regarded as separate fields with separate communities and scientific traditions. Lucia schools also aim at creating the next generation of researchers who will realize integrated intelligent robots. These researchers should be familiar with the methods in the two fields, and should be able to work across their traditional boundaries. Next generation researchers should combine theoretical insights from both areas with practical understanding of physical robotics systems.
The school has invited professionals from Aldebaran Robotics, University of Bremen, University of Leuven, Danish Technological Institute, University of Sapienza etc., which are well known for their research in AI and Robotics area.
At the school Nazgul has gained a unique training in ROS (Robotics Operating System) programming, Linux programming, Gazebo simulators, AI planning algorithms and interfaces, has been exposed to new technologies and applied some of them through exercises on real robots. Nazgul has also extended her networks and had an opportunity to discuss her research work with top level scholars, some of which has expressed an interest in our current project – industrial manipulator based intelligent assist system for human-robot cooperative assembly tasks – and have had used the design of our 3-fingered gripper in their research.
