Alessandro Vinciarelli

I had a chance to give a keynote speech at TAROS (Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems), one of the oldest and most established robotics conferences:

https://taros-conference.org

Thanks to the open-minded vision of the organisers (Angelo Cangelosi and Ana Cavalcanti), multiple keynote speeches were dedicated to the connection between robotics (which is a lot about machinery and mechanics, we should never forget) and human users such as development (great talk by Alessandra Sciutti of the Italian Institute of Technology on how robots can develop like children) and even religion (very interesting talk by Erica Baffelli of the University of Manchester on how robots are being used in Japanese Buddhist temples). I hope I contributed to attract attention to the dimension of social interaction, especially for what concerns robots that will integrate our everyday life.

Another interesting opportunity was to discuss with other Centre for Doctoral Training Directors. Interesting to see how much weight is now put on training aspects such as developing awareness about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), mental health and wellbeing, communication, entrepreneurship, etc. I wonder whether all these dimensions, that are certainly important, end up distracting the students from research, that should be the core aspect of PhD.