I aim to design systems that are intelligent, that think for themselves, that have commonsense and that can cope in any environment.
I draw on both symbolic methods and machine learning to find solutions to applied problems.
See below for some of my research activities and publications.
Activities and Grants
I have served in leadership roles in various teams at RoboCup. RoboCup is the premier international robotics competition. In it, teams must program robots to serve as domestic helpers (take out garbage, tour guide, give directions, clean up, receptionist) or play competitive soccer against other robots.
- In 2019, we were world champions in the RoboCup@Home Social Standard Platform League
- In each of the 2017 and 2018 competitions, we placed second globally, in the RoboCup@Home Social Standard Platform League
- In 2017 we received the "Best Human-Robot Interface Award" in RoboCup@Home
- Prior to 2016 we occasionally competed in the RoboCup Soccer Standard Platform League and the RoboCup Soccer 3D Simulation League and were well known for innovative methods of play.
I am/was a chief investigator on the following grants:
- UTS Blue Sky Grant 2019, Privacy Considerations for Passive Data Collection by Social Robots in Public Spaces
- UTS Teaching and Learning Grant 2015, Video Recording Studio for the School of Software
- UTS Chancellor’s Post Doctoral Research Fellowship 2012-2015, Self-configuring Cognitive Architectures
- ARC Linkage Grant 2012-2014, A Framework for Physical and Social Collaboration: Towards the Smarter Planet Vision
- NSW TechVouchers 2011, Analysis of Time-Based Social Media User Trends
- UTS Communities of Practice 2009, Collaborative Smart Mobile Innovation
- UTS Gender Equity Fund 2009, Leadership in Innovation (as a mentor)
In addition, I am/was an investigator on several industry partnerships, including South Western Sydney Local Health District, Jobs for NSW, Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
I have served as a conference chair for NRAC 2009, PCAR 2008 and 2010, Smarter Living 2011, Commonsense 2013 and ICSR 2014 as well as on the advisory board of Commonsense, and the workshop chair of ISWC 2013. I also work as a reviewer and program committee member of many conferences and journals including IJCAI, AAAI, ECAI, AIJ, HRI, AGI and Social Robotics.
Publications
A selection of publications appears below.
Social Robotics
- Sarita Herse, Jonathan Vitale, Daniel Ebrahimian, Meg Tonkin, Suman Ojha, Sidra Sidra, Benjamin Johnston, Sophie Phillips, Gudi Siva Leela Krishna Chand, Jesse Clark, William Judge, Mary-Anne Williams, Bon Appetit! Robot Persuasion for Food Recommendation, International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction 2018
- Sarita Herse, Jonathan Vitale, Meg Tonkin, Daniel Ebrahimian, Suman Ojha, Benjamin Johnston, William Judge, Mary-Anne Williams, Do You Trust Me, Blindly? Factors Influencing Trust Towards a Robot Recommender System, International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication 2018
- Suman Ojha, Mary-Anne Williams, Benjamin Johnston, The Essence of Ethical Reasoning in Robot-Emotion Processing, International Journal of Social Robotics 2018
- Jonathan Vitale, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Facial Motor Information is Sufficient for Identity Recognition, Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 2017
- Gudi Siva Leela Krishna Chand, Suman Ojha, Sidra, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, A Proactive Robot Tutor Based on Emotional Intelligence, International Conference on Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 2017
- Suman Ojha, Gudi Siva Leela Krishna Chand, Jonathan Vitale, Mary-Anne Williams, Benjamin Johnston, I Remember What You Did: A Behavioural Guide-Robot, International Conference on Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 2017
- Jonathan Vitale, Mary-Anne Williams, Benjamin Johnston, The face-space duality hypothesis: a computational model, Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 2016
- Syed Ali Raza, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Reward from Demonstration in Interactive Reinforcement Learning, Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference 2016
- Hugo Romat, Mary-Anne Williams, Xun Wang, Benjamin Johnston, Henry Bard, Natural Human-Robot Interaction Using Social Cues, International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 2016
- Tuck Wah Leong, Benjamin Johnston, Co-design and Robots: A Case Study of a Robot Dog for Aging People, International Conference on Social Robotics 2016
- Jonathan Vitale, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, The face-space duality hypothesis: a computational model, Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 2016
- Syed Ali Raza, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Reward from Demonstration in Interactive Reinforcement Learning, Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference 2016
- Hugo Romat, Mary-Anne Williams, Xun Wang, Benjamin Johnston, Henry Bard, Natural Human-Robot Interaction Using Social Cues, International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 2016
- Jonathan Vitale, Mary-Anne Williams, Benjamin Johnston, Giuseppe Boccignone, Affective facial expression processing via simulation: A probabilistic model, Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2014
- Jonathan Vitale, Mary-Anne Williams, Benjamin Johnston, Socially Impaired Robots: Human Social Disorders and Robots’ Socio-Emotional Intelligence, International Conference on Social Robotics 2014
- Michael Beetz, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Robotics 2014
- Xun Wang, Mary-Anne Williams, Peter Gärdenfors, Jonathan Vitale, Shaukat Abidi, Benjamin Johnston, Benjamin Kuipers, Alan Huang, Directing human attention with pointing, IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication 2014
- Wei Wang, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Social Networking for Robots to Share Knowledge, Skills and Know-how, International Conference on Social Robotics 2012
- Rony Novianto, Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Attention in the ASMO Cognitive Architecture, International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2010
- Mary-Anne Williams, Peter Gärdenfors, Benjamin Johnston, Glenn Wightwick, Anticipation as a Strategy: A Design Paradigm for Robotics, International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management 2010
- Muh. Anshar, Benjamin Johnston, Ronny Novianto, Christopher Stanton, Xun Wang, Mary-Anne Williams, The Bear Project: A Cognitive Approach to Robotics (System Demo), International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling 2008
Commonsense Reasoning
- Benjamin Johnston, An Interface for Crowd-sourcing Spatial Models of Commonsense, International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning 2011
- Benjamin Johnston, The Collection of Physical Knowledge and its Application in Intelligent Systems, International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence 2011
- Benjamin Johnston, Practical Artificial Commonsense, PhD thesis 2009/2010 (UTS Best Dissertation Prize)
- Benjamin Johnston, The Toy Box Problem (and a Preliminary Solution), International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence 2010
- Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Conservative and Reward-driven Behavior Selection in a Commonsense Reasoning Framework, AAAI Fall Symposium on Multi-Representational Architectures for Human-Level Intelligence 2009
- Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, A Formal Framework for the Symbol Grounding Problem, International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence 2009
- Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Autonomous Learning of Commonsense Simulations, International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning 2009
- Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, Comirit: Commonsense Reasoning by Integrating Simulation and Logic, International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence 2008
- Benjamin Johnston, Mary-Anne Williams, A Generic Framework for Approximate Simulation in Commonsense Reasoning Systems, International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning 2007
Internet of Things
- Karla Felix Navarro, Valerie Gay, Benjamin Johnston, Peter Leijdekkers, Ewan Vaughan, Xun Wang, Mary-Anne Williams, SocialCycle: What Can a Mobile App Do To Encourage Cycling?, IEEE goSMART workshop on Global Trends in Smart Cities 2013
- Benjamin Johnston, Fangkai Yang, Rogan Mendoza, Xiaoping Chen, Mary-Anne Williams, Ontology Based Object Categorization for Robots, International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management 2008
- Rogan Mendoza, Benjamin Johnston, Fangkai Yang, Zhisheng Huang, Xiaoping Chen, Mary-Anne Williams, OBOC: Ontology Based Object Categorisation for Robots, International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 2007
Inference with Defeasible Logic