Anca Dragan: Human-Robot Interaction and Reward Engineering

Anca Dragan is a professor at Berkeley, working on human-robot interaction — algorithms that look beyond the robot’s function in isolation, and generate robot behavior that accounts for interaction and coordination with human beings.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Anca’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ancadianadragan
Anca’s Website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~anca/

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
02:26 – Interest in robotics
05:32 – Computer science
07:32 – Favorite robot
13:25 – How difficult is human-robot interaction?
32:01 – HRI application domains
34:24 – Optimizing the beliefs of humans
45:59 – Difficulty of driving when humans are involved
1:05:02 – Semi-autonomous driving
1:10:39 – How do we specify good rewards?
1:17:30 – Leaked information from human behavior
1:21:59 – Three laws of robotics
1:26:31 – Book recommendation
1:29:02 – If a doctor gave you 5 years to live…
1:32:48 – Small act of kindness
1:34:31 – Meaning of life