‘Get Together’ with Jens Kober

In a riveting session on the 2st of February, ISR | Lisboa hosted esteemed speaker Jens Kober, Associate Professor at TU Delft in the Netherlands, for the latest edition of the “Get Together” seminar series. Kober, a distinguished figure in the realm of robotics, boasts an impressive academic background, having served as a postdoctoral scholar at both CoR-Lab, Bielefeld University, and the Honda Research Institute Europe in Germany. He earned his PhD in Engineering from TU Darmstadt and the MPI for Intelligent Systems in 2012, accumulating a plethora of prestigious awards throughout his career, including the Georges Giralt PhD Award, the IEEE RAS Early Academic Career Award, and the RSS Early Career Award, alongside securing an ERC Starting grant.

Kober’s presentation, titled “Robots Learning Through Interactions,” delved into the intricate process of robots autonomously acquiring and refining motor skills. He elucidated to the audience about the multifaceted challenges posed by high-dimensional data, nonlinear dynamics, contact dynamics, and the myriad variables inherent in environmental interactions. Central to his discourse was the pivotal role of human involvement in the robot learning paradigm, advocating for intermittent interaction to enhance efficacy and efficiency.

Drawing from his extensive research repertoire, Kober expounded upon various methodological frameworks, encompassing supervised learning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and interactive learning. He bolstered theoretical propositions with tangible demonstrations, showcasing real-world robot experiments spanning from recreational tasks like the “ball-in-a-cup” game to pragmatic applications within retail environments.

The seminar culminated in an intellectually stimulating dialogue, leaving attendees captivated by Kober’s insights and anticipating future trajectories in robotics.