Artificial intelligence and robotics aid Israeli security

In the spring of 2013, a team of robots programmed by Bar-Ilan University Professor Gal Kaminka reached the RoboCup world soccer championship game, the robotic version of the World Cup final. Although Team Israel has never advanced to the playoff stage of FIFA’s international human soccer tournament, the country’s robotic counterparts are consistently ranked as a world power. 

In just one of many extraordinary high-tech projects which he oversees, Kaminka combines social psychology theories with the best microchips and circuitry Israel has to offer in designing robotic teamwork.

Kaminka works his high-tech magic in the robotics and artificial intelligence lab of the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. His technology is helping to keep Israel safe and on the cusp of new scientific breakthroughs. Some of his robotic programming is employed by the IDF in patrolling the dangerous borders and tunnels of the Gaza strip. It’s an invaluable, high-tech alternative that keeps Israeli soldiers from harm’s way. 

Since July 2017, the IDF has deployed fully automated self-driving military vehicles, developed in Kaminka’s lab, aimed at keeping terrorists from crossing over into Israel or deploying explosives. Next up for the IDF are plans to equip the vehicles with weapons such as machine guns and deploy them in stages to Israel’s frontiers with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

“My research focuses on social intelligence, specifically the transition from a single mind to many,” says Kaminka. “Such understanding can lead to building robots and virtual humans that are able to collaborate, coordinate, manipulate, and reason.” His recent work has focused on techniques for plan recognition (allowing robots to understand others by observing their behavior), for general teamwork in robots, and for simulating human crowds. 

Kaminka’s educational roots are in the U.S., where he received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. He won an IBM Faculty Award, the 2014 Landau Award for Arts and Sciences, and served as chair or co-chair of several international conferences. He is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, and of course, the RoboCup Federation.

In 2012, Kaminka participated in a fellowship program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. His mission: to create a battle plan for ridding the world of “autistic” robots.

“Almost all robots are autistic: they generally do not behave correctly in social settings, whether with humans or with other robots,” Kaminka explains. “I believe that we must create socially capable robots by building general social intelligence into them. That means using knowledge from computer science, neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science.”

Kaminka feels that the main goal of his research is to always improve and enhance his knowledge, rather than achieving a specific task.

“When the Americans wanted to put a man on the moon, their main objective wasn’t necessarily the symbolic ability to stick their flag on the land of the moon. Reaching the moon was, in fact, a means to an end, which made them enhance and perfect existing knowledge and develop new technologies, to enable this trip as well as many other great uses.”

Currently, Bar-Ilan is in the process of building a new Computer Science Center which will house such top departments as Cyber-Security, Natural Language Processing, plus a remarkable, multi-story drone and robotics lab for Kaminka’s high-tech inventions.

“Only he who sees the invisible can do the impossible,” says Kaminka. “It’s the only way to break boundaries and make new discoveries. The new building will enable us to achieve even greater goals and remain Israel’s leading technology center.”

Kaminka lives in Kfar Saba with his wife and three kids. He admits that robots are his main interest, both at work and at home.

“I’m the happiest man alive, for being able to work at a job that is both my profession and my hobby. Outside my family, robots are my life. I just can’t believe I’m being paid to do exactly what I love.”

For more information on how to help contribute to Prof. Gal Kaminka’s vital research, please contact American Friends of Bar-Ilan University at 212 906-3900, or on the web at AFBIU.org

Source: Bar-Ilan University