Dr. Damith Herath received his PhD in Robotics from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2008 while at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS) and has a BSc (Hons) in Production Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 2001. He held a doctoral fellowship at CAS prior to joining MARCS Institute on the Thinking Head Project as the Research Engineer. At MARCS he led several robotic projects that explore various nuances of Human-Robot Interaction including reciprocal influences between the arts and robotics. His interests include autonomous robot navigation, localization and mapping, human-robot interaction and robotic art. Over the last four years he has contributed to a number of robotic art projects as the lead roboticist. He is also the convener and program co-chair of the 2011 International Conference on Robotics and Automation - Workshop on Robots and Art.

Dr. Christian Kroos received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Phonetics and Theatre Studies from the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany. His work on speech articulator movements and face motion during spoken language led to interdisciplinary research covering computer vision, cognitive sciences and robotics conducted internationally at the Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing at Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität (Germany), at ATR International (Japan) and at Haskins Laboratories (USA). At MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Australia, he explored non-verbal human-machine interaction in the Thinking Head project. Besides his interest in robotic agents, he is still fascinated by human speech production and the evolution of language.

Offers an in-depth look at robotic art from the viewpoints of artists, engineers, and scientists

Addresses questions about the benefits, risks, ethical issues, and changes to society that are the consequence of robots interacting with human beings

Written by experts in the field

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Historical review.- Contemporary works of robotic art.- Robotic research and the arts.- Working together.- On the horizon.