March 2026
I've added a new section with selected talks I gave over the last few years. You can find it here.
Séverin Lemaignan
My robots are rich
My robots are rich
I've added a new section with selected talks I gave over the last few years. You can find it here.
HRI'26 is over: excellent organisation in Scotland, non-stop chatting with old & new friends, inspiring talks... one of my best HRI conference!
The SocialMinds team had a strong presence at the conference, with several papers and presentations, and our cute Emy robot, from the EMOROBCARE project.
Here are some highlights:
I presented our alt.HRI paper on the difficulty of build humanoid robots that are also responsible and human-centered. The paper is available here. You can also download the slides of the presentation from here.
I participated in a workshop on Procedural Face generation for robots, organised by the great Semio folks. Download the slides of the presentation from here.
After 4.5 good years at PAL Robotics, I am thrilled to announce that I have joined the Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (IIIA) of the Spanish National Centre for Scientific Research (CSIC) as a Research Scientist in Artificial Social Cognition.
From January 2026, I will co-lead the newly founded SocialMinds AI lab with Raquel Ros. The lab investigates Artificial Social Cognition with an interdisciplinary perspective, with colleagues from virtual worlds, sociology, education sciences, multi-agent systems, and of course, social robotics.
As you can expect, I will primarily focus on social robotics, developing a new line of research around deep representation for social cognition and social learning.
Exciting times ahead!
3 years after the initial launch of the ROS4HRI project, I've finally took the time to refresh the project website!
Head to ros4hri.github.io to check it out. You'll find updated documentation, new tutorials, and a showcase of robots using ROS4HRI.
A worldwide pandemic and the Brexit made it: after 6 years in the UK and 3 fantastic years at Bristol Robotics Lab, we are moving to Barcelona! and I am super excited to join PAL Robotics where I'll take the lead on the development of new social capabilities for their service robots.
Cherry on the cake: PAL Robotics has a great community ethos. Expect our cool social tech to be open-source!