Speaker Bio
I am an Assistant Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. I direct the Interactive Structures Lab, where we investigate and develop interactive design tools that enable digital fabrication of complex structures for novice users. Interactive structures embed functionality within their geometry such that they can react to simple input with complex behavior. Such structures enable materials that can, e.g., embed robotic movement, can perform computations, or communicate with users. We develop optimization-based interactive design tools that enable novices to contribute their creativity and experts to apply their intuition in order to foster the advancement of high-tech materials. Before joining CMU, I was a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich and completed my PhD at the Hasso Plattner Institute, a small, highly selective, top-tier institute for computer science in Germany. My work is published at and awarded by top-tier HCI (ACM CHI & UIST) and graphics venues (ACM SIGGRAPH). It was invited for multiple exhibitions, including a permanent exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center in Austria. My work also captured the interest of media such as Wired, Dezeen, Fast Company, Gizmodo, etc., and was invited for a TEDx talk.
Embedded Physical AI
Alexandra Ion, Carnegie Mellon University
Thursday 14th November 2024. 13:00-14:00 GMT. The Buncar.
The world around us is inherently physical, yet adaptive interfaces focus mostly on digital content and representations. Physical AI is moving in the right direction by creating models that can understand instructions and perform physical tasks in the real world, typically with humanoid or quadrupedal robots as physical AI agents.
In this talk, I envision a future where such physical AI agents move into the background—instead of interacting with large general-purpose robots, we should interact with physical objects that are familiar to us. I call this Embedded Physical AI. Bottles, desks, chairs, walls; any object surrounding us should dynamically adapt to our needs, by not only adjusting their user interfaces to fit the context but also by transforming their physical features, material properties, and affordances to instantly become exactly what users need in that moment.
I will discuss how creating such intelligent agents requires two main components: (1) adaptive physical architectures to facilitate physical change, e.g., through metamaterials, shape-changing interfaces, soft robotics, etc., and (2) sensing and prediction systems to understand when and what functionality users require. With new approaches in predictive user modeling and innovations in manufacturing and material science, the time might just be ripe to make this challenging vision a reality.