With the growing interest in developing fully capable humanoid and general-purpose
robots, the challenge of transforming these robots into trusted teammates capable of complex
decision-making, natural communication, and human-level explanation has become a
significant area of research. This seminar introduces HARMONIC, a framework designed to
transform general-purpose robots into reliable partners by employing a two-system strategy
that integrates high-level cognitive functions with robust robotic control. The framework's core
features include advanced cognitive capabilities that allow robots to understand and interpret
language and human commands, make autonomous decisions, and provide explanations for
their actions in a human-like manner. This seminar will highlight these innovative aspects of
HARMONIC and its deployment in various scenarios, demonstrating its potential to enhance
robot autonomy and teamwork in both single and multi-robot scenarios.
Dr. Sanjay Oruganti’s research addresses several facets of cognitive robotics, including the
development of cognitive-robotic architectures and the integration of generative AI methods
with explanatory perception, reasoning, and action, leading to trust, and automating knowledge
acquisition for content-centric cognitive agents. He has been a major contributor to the
development of the HARMONIC framework aimed at transforming general-purpose robots into
trusted teammates in human-robotic teams.
Dr. Oruganti earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of
Georgia, where his research centered on exploiting emergence, heterogeneity, and knowledge
transfer in multi-agent systems. With over 10 years of industrial and research experience, Dr.
Oruganti has led numerous projects in the development of heterogeneous multi-robot systems
and photonics-based biomedical devices for breath and environmental monitoring.