معرفی
Frank Foerster is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the School of Physics, Engineering & Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire. He is a core member of both the Adaptive Systems Research Group and Robotics Research Group within the Centre for AI and Robotics Research, specializing in developmental and cognitive robotics with a focus on human-robot interaction.
His research centers on language acquisition in robots and communicative interaction between humans and machines, drawing from cognitive science, developmental psychology, and conversation analysis. Foerster investigates how social interaction regularities can inform machine learning for socially intelligent robots, including work on motor resonance in human-robot dyads. He has organized influential workshops at ICRA 2020 on human-robot handovers and UK-RAS workshops on failures in robotic speech interfaces.
Analysis of his 2023-2025 publications reveals concentrated efforts on improving human-robot communication through formal reporting standards, failure/repair mechanisms in speech interfaces, and the relationship between fast interactions and perceived robot agency. His work bridges theoretical cognitive science with practical robotics applications.
Foerster leads three significant research projects: FLUIDITY (on fluid speech interface interactions), CATLYP (addressing loneliness in older adults using social robots), and a 2022 project charting speech interface limitations. He serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems and actively reviews for major robotics journals.
He teaches key courses including Models and Methods of Computing (BSc), Introduction to Robotics (BSc), and Theory and Practice of Artificial Intelligence (MSc), while supervising numerous AI-focused BSc projects. His ORCID profile (0000-0003-1797-682X) documents 31 research outputs spanning 2009-2025.
