Every year study association CognAC organises a symposium related to artificial
intelligence: the Annual CognAC Artificial Intelligence Symposium (ACAIS). The goal of the
symposium is to inform students (and other attendees) about the latest developments in AI and inspire them for future projects.
This year the ACAIS took place on the 7th of May, for the first time at Cultuurspinnerij de
Vasim, and focused on topics related to robotics. There were four invited talks: “Human-
Robot Collaboration” by Prof. Dr. Mark Neerincx, “Social Robots in Daily Life” by Dr. Manja Lohse, “Robotics and Elderly People” by Dr. Dietwig Lowet, and “Autonomous flight of a 20 gram Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle” by Dr. Guido de Croon. The latter included a demonstration of the DelFly!
This year the attendees were also given the possibility to attend a workshop on the use of
microcontrollers, titled “A Robot’s Brain”. Fifty attendees got to know the use of
microcontrollers through an interactive workshop using the TI MSP430 Launchpad
development kit.
A discussion was led by Dr. Aimee van Wynsberghe about ethics related to robotics, who started the discussion with an introductory talk where after she invited the audience to actively participate. This resulted in a very interesting discussion covering questions such as “Should we trust robots?”, “Can robots feel guilt?” and “How do we ensure ethical behaviour by robots?”.
With 110 attendees, ACAIS 2014 was a great success!
