Guy Hoffman describes how animation, acting lessons, and jazz led to a new approach to artificial intelligence for robots that "think with their bodies", plan less, improvise more, and take chances, even at the risk of making mistakes, and why this makes for robots that better fit our homes, offices, schools and hospitals.
Hoffman is an assistant professor at the School of Communications at IDC Herzliya and co-director of the IDC Media Innovation Lab. Previously, he was a research fellow at Georgia Tech and at MIT. Hoffman holds a Ph.D from MIT in Human-robot Interaction and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University. He also studied animation at Parsons School of Design in NYC.
His research deals with human-robot interaction and collaboration, embodied cognition for robots, nonverbal communication for robots, entertainment, theater, and musical performance robotics, and non-humanoid robot design. Among others projects, Hoffman developed the world's first human-robot joint theater performance, as well as the first real-time improvisation human-robot Jazz duet.
Hoffman designed several robots, including a robotic desk lamp, AUR, which won the IEEE International Robot Design Competition. His research papers have earned top academic awards, including Best Paper awards at HRI and robotics conferences in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010. He was software and animation lead on the World Expo Digital Water Pavilion; part of a team recognized as creating one of TIME magazine's Best Inventions of the Year; and was commissioned for a title-page illustration of the New York Times Week in Review. Hoffman's work has been exhibited around the world and covered in the international press, including CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Haaretz, Science, New Scientist, PBS, NPR, and Comedy Central. He was selected as one of Israel's most promising researchers under forty in both 2010 and 2012.
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