TECoSA has welcomed seven new postdoctoral researchers to the center. In this interview series, we will introduce the talented researchers joining our community and explore the innovative work they are pursuing. The next postdoc featured in the series is Merle Reimann.
Hi Merle, what were you doing before signing up as a post doc at TECoSA/KTH?
I finished a PhD in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I also did a five-months long research visit in a Computational Linguistics lab.
What does your research focus on?
My research is on human-robot interaction with a focus on spoken interaction and how robots can communicate their capabilities to the human user. Within TECoSA my project is a use-case for the applications track since spoken human-robot interaction is resource intense and time sensitive, especially when deployed in the real-world contexts.
What challenges does your research address/what problem does it solve?
My research addresses how to make sure that users can use social robots in real-world contexts, even if they have no previous interaction experience. I am looking at how speech interaction can be used to communicate the robot’s capabilities through the interaction itself.
What makes this field particularly exciting to you?
Most people do not know how to interact with a (social) robot when they encounter it in real-world contexts, since it is still an emerging technology for them. Helping those novice users to still have smooth and efficient interactions by adjusting the robots behavior is very rewarding. Additionally, it never gets boring with humans and robots, since so many unexpected behaviors can be observed.
What do you look forward to the most during this period as a Postdoc?
Working at KTH in general. Learning more through my research, but also advancing my research by combining it with outcomes from other TECoSA projects.
Do you have an unusual talent you have that most people don’t know about?
I am very good at finding four-leaf clovers.
Read more about Merle on her profile page.
