About

• I am a PhD student at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, part of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics. I am also a member of the HRI Lab and the Interaction Lab at Heriot-Watt University. Previously, I was awarded an Electronics Engineering degree by the National University of Rosario (Argentina), and an Erasmus Mundus Masters in Vision and Robotics (VIBOT) jointly awarded by the University of Burgundy (France), the University of Girona (Spain) and Heriot-Watt University (UK). I carried out my Masters thesis in the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour (IPAB) at the University of Edinburgh. I also hold a Masters in Robotics and Autonomous Systems awarded as part of my doctoral training.
• My current research interests include lifelong machine learning, situated interactive learning, hierarchical task learning, language grounding, learning through dialogue and visual demonstrations, and cognitive systems, but more importantly how to apply all these things to robots operating alongside people and in human-centred environments.

News

• May 2020 - I have started a part-time position as a research associate within the SPRING project at Heriot-Watt University.
• Mar 2019 - I started running a reading group on planning and learning with Frank Broz at Heriot-Watt University.
• Feb 2019 - Our review paper on continual lifelong learning with neural networks has been published on Neural Networks. You can get a copy from here.
• Dec 2018 - I have started a part-time position as a research associate within the SoCoRo project at Heriot-Watt University.
• Feb 2018 - New review paper on continual lifelong learning with neural networks. Preprint already available on arXiv.
• December 2017 - We will be hosting our first local tournament of the European Robotics League - Service Robots from the 22nd to the 26th of January 2018 in our brand new test bed, part of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics. More info here.
• November 2017 - The first edition of the Alexa Prize is now over. The winners were announced at the AWS re:Invent conference held in Las Vegas during the last week of November. Congratulations to Sounding Board, the team from the University of Washington! Read about it here.
• September 2017 - Our team has made it to the finals in the Amazon Alexa Prize!!! Read about it here!
• July 2017 - I'll be visiting the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bremen during the second half of July.
• July 2017 - The semifinals period of the Amazon Alexa Prize has started!
• April 2017 - My team and I are going to be in Seattle at the end of the month for the Alexa Prize Summit.
• November 2016 - Our team has been selected as one of the 12 sponsored teams to participate in the Amazon Alexa Prize!!

Publications

Journals

• G. I. Parisi, R. Kemker, J. L. Part, C. Kanan and S. Wermter, Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review, in Neural Networks, 2019. [doi] [bib]

  @article{parisi19,
    author = {Parisi, German I. and Kemker, Ronald and Part, Jose L. and Kanan, Christopher and Wermter, Stefan},
    title = {{Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review}},
    journal = {Neural Networks},
    volume = {113},
    pages = {54--71},
    year = {2019}
  }

Conferences

• J. L. Part, D. Hernández García, Y. Yu, N. Gunson, C. Dondrup and O. Lemon, Towards Visual Dialogue for Human-Robot Interaction (Video Submission), in Companion Proceedings of the 16^th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Boulder, CO, USA, March 2021. [doi] [bib] [video]

  @inproceedings{part-video-hri21,
    author = {Part, Jose L. and Hern\'{a}ndez Garc\'{i}a, Daniel and Yu, Yanchao and Gunson, Nancie and Dondrup, Christian and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Towards Visual Dialogue for Human-Robot Interaction}},
    booktitle = {Companion Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)},
    address = {Boulder, CO, USA},
    pages = {670--672},
    month = {March},
    year = {2021}
  }

• P. E. McKenna, I. Keller, J. L. Part, M. Y. Lim, R. Aylett, F. Broz and G. Rajendran, "Sorry to Disturb You": Autism and Robot Interruptions (LBR Extended Abstract), in Companion Proceedings of the 15^th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Cambridge, UK, March 2020. [doi] [bib] [video]

  @inproceedings{mckenna-lbr-hri20,
    author = {McKenna, Peter E. and Keller, Ingo and Part, Jose L. and Lim, Mei Yii and Aylett, Ruth and Broz, Frank and Rajendran, Gnanathusharan},
    title = {{"Sorry to Disturb You": Autism and Robot Interruptions}},
    booktitle = {Companion Proceedings of the 15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)},
    address = {Cambridge, UK},
    pages = {360--362},
    month = {March},
    year = {2020}
  }

• J. L. Part and O. Lemon, Towards a Robot Architecture for Situated Lifelong Object Learning, in Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Macau, China, November 2019. [doi] [pdf] [bib] [video]

  @inproceedings{part-iros19,
    author = {Part, Jose L. and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Towards a Robot Architecture for Situated Lifelong Object Learning}},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
    address = {Macau, China},
    pages = {1854--1860},
    month = {November},
    year = {2019}
  }

• A. Vanzo, J. L. Part, Y. Yu, D. Nardi and O. Lemon, Incrementally Learning Semantic Attributes through Dialogue Interaction, in Proceedings of the 17^th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Stockholm, Sweden, July 2018. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{vanzo-aamas18,
    author = {Vanzo, Andrea and Part, Jose L. and Yu, Yanchao and Nardi, Daniele and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Incrementally Learning Semantic Attributes through Dialogue Interaction}},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS)},
    address = {Stockholm, Sweden},
    pages = {865--873},
    month = {July},
    year = {2018}
  }

• J. L. Part and O. Lemon, Incremental Online Learning of Objects for Robots Operating in Real Environments, in Proceedings of the 7^th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-EPIROB), Lisbon, Portugal, September 2017. [doi] [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{part-icdl17,
    author = {Part, Jose L. and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Incremental Online Learning of Objects for Robots Operating in Real Environments}},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 7th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-EPIROB)},
    address = {Lisbon, Portugal},
    pages = {304--310},
    month = {September},
    year = {2017}
  }

• J. L. Part and O. Lemon, Teaching Robots through Situated Interactive Dialogue and Visual Demonstrations (DC Extended Abstract), in Proceedings of the 26^th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Melbourne, Australia, August 2017. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{part-dc-ijcai17,
    author = {Part, Jose L. and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Teaching Robots through Situated Interactive Dialogue and Visual Demonstrations}},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)},
    address = {Melbourne, Australia},
    pages = {5201--5202},
    month = {August},
    year = {2017}
  }

Workshops

• D. Hernández García, Y. Yu, W. Sieińska, J. L. Part, N. Gunson, O. Lemon and C. Dondrup, Explainable Representations of the Social State: A Model for Social Human-Robot Interactions, in AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), Washington, DC, USA, November 2020. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{hernandez-garcia-aaai-fss-20,
    author = {Hern\'{a}ndez Garc\'{i}a, Daniel and Yu, Yanchao and Siei\'{n}ska, Weronika and Part, Jose L. and Gunson, Nancie and Lemon, Oliver and Dondrup, Christian},
    title = {{Explainable Representations of the Social State: A Model for Social Human-Robot Interactions}},
    booktitle = {AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)},
    address = {Washington, DC, USA},
    month = {November},
    year = {2020}
  }

• P. McKenna, F. Broz, I. Keller, J. L. Part, G. Rajendran and R. Aylett, Towards Robot-Assisted Social Skills Training for Adults with ASC, in Workshop on the Challenges of Working on Social Robots that Collaborate with People at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Glasgow, UK, May 2019. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{mckenna-ws-chi19,
    author = {McKenna, Peter and Broz, Frank and Keller, Ingo and Part, Jose L. and Rajendran, Gnanathusharan and Aylett, Ruth},
    title = {{Towards Robot-Assisted Social Skills Training for Adults with ASC}},
    booktitle = {Workshop on the Challenges of Working on Social Robots that Collaborate with People at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)},
    address = {Glasgow, UK},
    month = {May},
    year = {2019}
  }

• I. Papaioannou, A. Cercas Curry, J. L. Part, I. Shalyminov, X. Xu, Y. Yu, O. Dušek, V. Rieser and O. Lemon, An Ensemble Model with Ranking for Social Dialogue, in Workshop on Conversational AI at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Long Beach, CA, USA, December 2017. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{papaioannou-ws-nips17,
    author = {Papaioannou, Ioannis and Cercas Curry, Amanda and Part, Jose L. and Shalyminov, Igor and Xu, Xinnuo and Yu, Yanchao and Du\v{s}ek, Ond\v{r}ej and Rieser, Verena and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{An Ensemble Model with Ranking for Social Dialogue}},
    booktitle = {Workshop on Conversational AI at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
    address = {Long Beach, CA, USA},
    month = {December},
    year = {2017}
  }

• J. L. Part and O. Lemon, Incremental On-Line Learning of Object Classes using a Combination of Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Networks and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, in Workshop on Bio-inspired Social Robot Learning in Home Scenarios at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Daejeon, Korea, October 2016. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{part-ws-iros16,
    author = {Part, Jose L. and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Incremental On-Line Learning of Object Classes using a Combination of Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Networks and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks}},
    booktitle = {Workshop on Bio-inspired Social Robot Learning in Home Scenarios at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
    address = {Daejeon, Korea},
    month = {October},
    year = {2016}
  }

Others

• I. Papaioannou, A. Cercas Curry, J. L. Part, I. Shalyminov, X. Xu, Y. Yu, O. Dušek, V. Rieser and O. Lemon, Alana: Social Dialogue using an Ensemble Model and a Ranker trained on User Feedback, in Proceedings of the 1st Alexa Prize, Las Vegas, NV, USA, November 2017. [pdf] [bib]

  @inproceedings{papaioannou-alexa17,
    author = {Papaioannou, Ioannis and Cercas Curry, Amanda and Part, Jose L. and Shalyminov, Igor and Xu, Xinnuo and Yu, Yanchao and Du\v{s}ek, Ond\v{r}ej and Rieser, Verena and Lemon, Oliver},
    title = {{Alana: Social Dialogue using an Ensemble Model and a Ranker trained on User Feedback}},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st Alexa Prize},
    address = {Las Vegas, NV, USA},
    month = {November},
    year = {2017}
  }