“For robots to understand people is impossible if people do not understand the robot.”

Raymond Cuijpers is Associate Professor of Cognitive Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His research topics include:

Socially intelligent robots. People automatically make inferences about other people’s behavior and build co-representations of others. When interacting with (humanoid) robots these mechanisms fail, because robots do not provide proper social cues nor do they know how to interpret them. However, this functionality is mandatory if robots are to successfully integrate in human society.

Artificial intelligence for cognitive agents. To deal with real world complexity in noisy, dynamically changing environments remains a huge challenge. Despite the huge progress in machine learning, pattern recognition, probabilistic reasoning and decision making, there is no generic way of knowing what to do in unknown contexts. Biologically inspired hybrid approaches allow emergent behaviors to be integrated with conventional technologies. There are many challenges, however, including to make these emergent behaviors fit in a meaningful way to the context.

Visual and haptic perception, and human motor control. Many applications aim extending or supporting humans like enhancing precision for eye surgeon using a robotic arm, or during tele-operation of an urban search-and-rescue robot. These technologies require a thorough understanding of how humans integrate visual and haptic information, and how they control their movements. For example, how does the surgeon perceive the orientation of his virtual scalpel when its virtual location does not coincide with its haptically felt location?

Raymond Cuijpers graduated in Applied Physics at the TU/e in 1996. He received his PhD in Physics of Man from Utrecht University in 2000. He did a postdoc on the role of shape perception on human visuo-motor control at Erasmus MC Rotterdam. In 2004, he did a second postdoc at Radboud University Nijmegen in the context of the European FP6 project called Joint Action Science and Technology (JAST), where he developed computational models of joint action, focusing on cognitive systems that will be ‘socially aware’. In 2008 he was appointed Assistant Professor at TU/e at the Human-Technology Interaction group.  

Raymond has been project coordinator of the European FP7 project Knowledgeable Service Robots for Aging (KSERA) that was successfully completed in 2013. Main aim of KSERA: to develop a Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) that helps older persons, especially those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) with their daily activities, care needs and disease self-management. In 2014 he became associate professor Cognitive Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction.