Full professor of cognitive science at the University of Skövde – and as of July 2016 also full professor of cognitive systems at IDA, Linköping University.
My general research interests are in theories and models of situated, embodied and distributed cognition. The current focus is on human interaction with autonomous systems – social robots in particular, but also automated vehicles, etc. Moreover, I have a long-standing interest in embodiment, i.e. the fundamental role(s) the body plays in cognition and emotion, in social interactions, and in people’s interactions with different types of technology. Another long-standing interest is recurrent neural networks and their use in cognitive modeling, adaptive robotics, etc.
Current main activities
Coordinator of European project DREAM (2014 – 2018), together with David Vernon, which deals with the use of social robots in psychological therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder.
Coordinator of Swedish research initiative AIR (2015 – 2019), together with Serge Thill, which deals with mutual action and intention recognition in human interaction with autonomous systems (robots, cars, etc). Our partners are Viktoria Swedish ICT, Örebro University and Halmstad University.
As part of this, we are currently organizing:
- a workshop on “Communicating Intentions in Human-Robot Interaction” at the RO-MAN conference, New York, 31 August 2016, and
- a journal special issue/research topic on “Intentions in Human-Robot Interaction” for the journal Frontiers in Neurorobotics
Co-chair of CogSIMA, the annual IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support since 2013. In 2017 CogSIMA will take place in Savannah, GA, in the last week of March.
Together with Mica Endsley and Kristin Schaefer, I’m currently also guest-editing a special on “Situation Awareness in Human-Machine Interactive Systems” for the journal Cognitive Systems Research – submisson deadline is 15 August 2016.