Nikolaos Mavridis

Educator/Teacher, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Global soul, Idea generator, Inventor, Potential employer, Scientist, Technologist, World traveler

Architecting Intelligent Robots! MIT PhD, As. Professor of Computer Engineering at New York University (NYU AD), my lab is the "Interactive Robots and Media Lab": home to "Ibn Sina", the first Arabic Speaking Conversational Android Robot, and the "FaceBots" social robots, Microsoft-award-funded, which have shared memories and shared friends with humans, and utilize and publish info on FaceBook. In more detail: Dr. Nikolaos Mavridis has received his PhD from MIT in 2007, after receiving his MSEE from UCLA and a MEng in ECE from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Currently, he is serving as an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at New York University, Abu Dhabi campus, where he has created the Interactive Robots and Media Laboratory (IRML). The lab is home to the microsoft-award winning "FaceBots" social robots project, as well as to "IbnSina", the first arabic-speaking humanlike humanoid. The current research Interests of Dr. Mavridis include: Social Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Robots and Natural Language, and Cognitive Systems. In his PhD thesis at MIT, he has introduced the "Grounded Situation Model" proposal, and has demonstrated its benefits by implementing it on Ripley, a manipulator robot with vision, touch, and speech synthesis/recognition. The sensorymotor/linguistic abilities of the resulting system were comparable to those implied by a standard psychological test for 3-year old children (The "Token Test"). Dr. Mavridis has received honorary fellowships from the Onasis foundation and the Hellenic State Fellowship organization, and he has also served in numerous leadership positions.

Robots. Artificial Intelligence. Cognitive Science and Systems. Interactive Theatre. Making Innovative Ideas a Reality. Helping Bright Young Minds Develop and Flourish. Building a Worthy Tomorrow!

Imagine a world where Robots are part of our everyday life - where we have conversations with robots, where they help us carry out tasks or solve problems, where they become valuable companions and friends. And also, imagine a world, where such Robots are not only developed in the big technological centers of the earth - but also in places such as Al Ain, an oasis city in the Arabian Desert. And last but not least, imagine a world where developing such robots becomes a tremendously exciting educational activity for our students - teaching them not only science and technology, but also collaboration and team working, and making them reflect deeper on us Humans and our Societies. This has been my quest, and it seems to have started to give results: Have a look at what BBC TV had to say about the Interactive Robots and Media Lab and Ibn Sina, the world's first arabic-language conversational Android Robot!

Cognitive systems, Embodied Telepresence, Human-Robot Interaction, Robots and Natural Language, Social Robotics

Growing Robots in the Desert (My TEDx Al Ain Talk): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNSqQKZiofA A thousand Eyes, a thousand Hands: The future of Collective Intelligence (My TEDx Athens Talk): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81bWAwVUj5Q