“What LLMs cannot do” seminars
Human-Centered ASP Applications: Representation & Reasoning
When: July 7 at 15:00
Where: Seminar room, A. Turing Building
Speaker: Esra Erdem, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
Abstract: As the definition of artificial intelligence (AI) changes towards building rational agents that are provably beneficial for humans, knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) plays an important role in addressing the user-oriented challenges in applications, such as generality, flexibility, provability, hybridity, bi-directional interactions, robustness, and explainability. In this tutorial, we will introduce participants to modeling and solving problems in human-centered real-world applications using KRR methods and tools provided by answer set programming, while addressing such challenges for AI.
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Exoskeletons for Mobility Restoration
When: July 7 at 17:00
Where: Seminar room, A. Turing Building
Speaker: Volkan Patoglu, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
Abstract: Neurological injuries are the primary cause of long-term disability in developed nations. While physical therapy is indispensable for recovery, manual rehabilitation remains the clinical standard despite inherent limitations in scalability and labor intensity. Robotic systems offer a transformative alternative by mitigating the physical burden on therapists while facilitating safe, high-intensity interventions. Furthermore, these platforms enable the quantitative assessment of patient progress, supporting continuous, data-driven personalization of treatment protocols.
In this talk, we review several case studies of exoskeletons engineered to restore mobility in patients with neurological pathologies. Specifically, we discuss how challenges in mechatronic design, interaction control, assistance personalization, and user evaluation are navigated to successfully translate laboratory research into clinical practice, directly enhancing patient outcomes.
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Applications of Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in Cognitive Robotics
When: July 8 at 15:00
Where: Seminar room, A. Turing Building
Speaker: Esra Erdem & Volkan Patoglu, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
Abstract: Cognitive Robotics, as described by Levesque and Reiter, is “the study of the knowledge representation and reasoning problems faced by an autonomous robot (or agent) in a dynamic and incompletely known world.” In general, it is concerned with endowing agents with a wide variety of higher level cognitive functions that involve reasoning, for example, about goals, perception, actions, the mental states of other agents, collaborative task execution. To achieve these objectives, cognitive robotics requires (re)integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and thus hybrid methods. In this tutorial, we will give examples from four different cognitive robotics applications to illustrate the need for (re)integrating spatial and temporal reasoning with robotics methods: service robotics, digital forensics, manipulation planning, and robot construction problems.
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Bios:
Esra Erdem is a professor in computer science and engineering at Sabanci University, Istanbul. She received her Ph.D. in computer sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, and carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Toronto and Vienna University of Technology. Her research is in the area of artificial intelligence, in particular, the mathematical foundations of knowledge representation and automated reasoning, and their applications to various domains, including robotics, bioinformatics, logistics, and economics. Dr. Erdem was a general co-chair of ICLP 2013, a program co-chair of ICLP 2019, KR 2020 and PADL 2025, the general chair of KR 2021, and the president of KR Inc. She is an associate editor for AIJ, JAIR and TPLP, and an associate Program Chair of IJCAI-ECAI 2026.
Volkan Patoglu is a professor of mechatronics engineering at Sabanci University. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2005), and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University (2006). His research is in the area of physical human-machine interaction, in particular, the design and control of force-feedback robotic systems with applications to rehabilitation. His research extends to cognitive robotics. He has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Haptics (2013-2017), IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (2018-2023), and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2019-2024).
