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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250526
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250529
DTSTAMP:20251217T131941Z
CREATED:20251217T123731Z
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SUMMARY:BrIAS x OHME : Crossing Wires - Arts\, AI & Robotics
DESCRIPTION:Crossing Wires is a three day event dedicated to Arts\, AI and Robotics\, presented by Ohme and hosted in collaboration with BrIAS – Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies. \n\n\n\nThe programme features art installations\, workshops\, engaging talks and a resonant closing night\, to celebrate the closure of the second edition of the Sustainable Robotics artistic residency. \n\n\n\nArtists and researchers reflect on current themes such as ethical issues\, climate change and our collective future in the age of automation and artificial intelligence. They share their vision and process\, aiming to offer insights into our complex relationship to creative thinking and the computational systems that increasingly shape our world. Crossing Wires investigates topics like sustainable robotics\, the future of Generative AI\, creative computers and the complex dynamics between Art and AI. \n\n\n\nFocusing on exploration rather than definitive answers\, this event opens a space for dialogue and exchange on how artistic and scientific practices can challenge each other in shaping tomorrow’s society. \n\n \nProgramme\nArt installations\nThe installations developed as part of the Sustainble Robotics residency will on display during the entire three days:​​ \n\n\n\n\nPlantoid by Dewi Brunet is a bio-inspired work that merges robotics and nature. This interactive installation invites visitors to discover robotic plants that respond to their environment. Plantoid explores the potential for harmonious interactions between technology and nature\, highlighting how robotic art can enrich our relationship with biodiversity.\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Garden of the Future by Kris Verdonck imagines an ecosystem where self-sustaining robots\, powered by renewable energy sources like solar and wind\, perform ecological roles in harmony with natural cycles. Free from batteries or power grids\, these robots adapt to energy fluctuations\, challenging conventional consumption.\n\n\n\n\n\nCarbon Technostructure by Guillaume Slizewicz and Gijs de Heij is an interactive installation that materialises the often invisible environmental impact of digital infrastructures. By employing real-time data analysis and physical visualisation techniques\, the project bridges the gap between the intangible nature of digital services and their tangible carbon footprint.\n\n  \n\nAI in education: Where are the opportunities? – Prof. Sarah Howard (University of Leeds) & Prof. Jo Tondeur (VUB)\n\n\n\nIn the fast evolving landscape of digital technologies\, the introduction of new artificial intelligence (AI) has caused great excitement and unrest in education. In “Teachers and Machines: Is something new happening?”\, we consider interactions between teachers and AI-advancements. The aim is to examine claims\, possible benefits and the conditions. The discussion presented in this talk is not just about the feasibility of AI tools in education\, but also about the context\, vision\, and strategic planning required to usefully integrate these technologies into the educational practice of tomorrow. Ultimately\, this work provides a perspective of putting teachers in a position to select and integrate new AI-enabled tools. \n\n\n\nSarah Howard is professor at the University of Leeds. The driving question of her research is: how can we help teachers best use digital technologies to support what they value in learning? A key focus of this work is experimenting with new approaches\, technologies and multimodal data to observe the classroom and explore digital technology integration\, with the aim of conducting research that is meaningful and useful in practice. \n\n\n\nJo Tondeur is Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Prior to academia he was a teacher across various levels of schooling. His research interests are in the field of educational innovation\, technology use\, online and blended learning\, and professional development. Most of his current research focuses on the interplay between (digital) innovations and pre/in-service training. \n  \n\nWorkshop: Carbon Technostructures – Guillaume Slizewicz & Gijs de Heij\nA hands-on workshop on the carbon technostructure of the web\, inviting participants to trace the journey of their HTTP requests and to link each network node to its energy source. By combining developer tools with API calls\, attendees will gain a direct sense of the geographic and environmental footprint of web activity. The aim is not only to reveal where data travels\, but to connect those pathways to real-world energy systems. \n\n\n\nIn the first part\, we will use traceroute commands and IP-localisation services to map the path taken by requests to a chosen website. Participants will learn to interpret each hop and record its location. In the second part\, we will query public energy-production APIs to discover the mix of renewables\, fossil fuels and other sources that power each node. \n\n\n\nThis comparative analysis will show how different regions rely on different energy mixes and invite discussion on how choice of infrastructure affects carbon intensity. \n\n\n\nBy the end of the day\, participants will have a working script\, and a clearer understanding of the hidden carbon cost of their web projects. Please bring your own laptop to take part. \n\n\n\nGuillaume Slizewicz is a designer and digital artist whose work sits at the intersection of technology\, the environment\, and societal issues. Through his practice\, he engages with the tension between innovation and sustainability\, using technology in poetic\, evocative and critical ways. His approach draws connections between ancient practices and contemporary digital tools. \n\n\n\nGijs de Heij is a Brussels based designer and programmer. He is a member of the collective Open Source Publishing which exclusively uses free and open source software (F/LOSS). Through his work he questions the influence and affordances of digital tools to make design and to enable different modes of collaboration. \n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n \nParticipation is free but registration is recommended due to limited capacity.
URL:https://brias.be/event/brias-ohme-crossing-wires-arts-ai-robotics/
LOCATION:BrIAS\, Boulevard Général Jacques 210\, Ixelles\, Brussels\, 1050\, Belgium
CATEGORIES:Other Events
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250528
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250529
DTSTAMP:20251217T132002Z
CREATED:20251217T122600Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251217T132002Z
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SUMMARY:BrIAS Seminar & Closing Ceremony
DESCRIPTION:BrIAS Sustainable Robotics\, AI and Automation Closing Ceremony \n\nSeminar 1: BrIAS Fellow Prof. Ilya Kolmanovsky\nExploiting Supervisory Schemes and the Interplay Between Computations and Closed-Loop Properties in Model Predictive Control\n\nAbstract: Model Predictive Control (MPC) leads to algorithmically defined nonlinear feedback laws for systems with pointwise-in-time state and control constraints. These feedback laws are defined by solutions to appropriately posed optimal control/trajectory optimization problems that are (typically) solved online. There is a growing interest in the use of MPC for practical applications\, including as an enabling technology for control and trajectory generation in autonomous vehicles\, including in aerospace\, automotive and robotics domains. To enable MPC implementation\, the solutions to MPC optimization problems must be computed reliably and within the available time. After describing several motivating applications in aerospace and automotive domains\, the talk will reflect on recent research by the presenter and his students/collaborators into strategies for computing solutions in optimization problems arising in receding horizon and shrinking horizon MPC formulations. These strategies include methods for solving MPC problems inexactly\, and the use of add-on supervisory schemes for MPC which reduce the computational time and enlarge the constrained closed-loop region of attraction. In particular\, a Computational Governor (CG) will be described which maintains feasibility and bounds the suboptimality of the MPC warm-start by altering the reference command provided to the inexactly solved MPC problem. As it also turns out\, the analysis of time distributed implementation of MPC based on fixed number of optimization algorithm iterations per time step and warm-starting benefits from the application of control-theoretic tools such as the small gain theorem; intriguingly\, similar tools can be exploited in “control-aware” multi-disciplinary design optimization. \n\n\n\nSeminar 2: BrIAS Fellow Prof. Bruno Sinopoli\n\n\n\nLinear Methods for Dimensionality Reduction: is there life beyond PCA?\n\n\n\nAbstract: Feature extraction and selection at the presence of nonlinear dependencies among the data is a fundamental challenge in unsupervised learning. We propose using a Gram-Schmidt (GS) type orthogonalization process over function spaces to detect and map out such dependencies. Specifically\, by applying the GS process over some family of functions\, we construct a series of covariance matrices that can either be used to identify new large-variance directions\, or to remove those dependencies from known directions. In the former case\, we provide information-theoretic guarantees in terms of entropy reduction. In the latter\, we provide precise conditions by which the chosen function family eliminates existing redundancy in the data. Each approach provides both a feature extraction and a feature selection algorithm. Our feature extraction methods are linear\, and can be seen as natural generalization of principal component analysis (PCA). We provide experimental results for synthetic and real-world benchmark datasets which show superior performance over state-of-the-art (linear) feature extraction and selection algorithms. Surprisingly\, our linear feature extraction algorithms are comparable and often outperform several important nonlinear feature extraction methods such as autoencoders\, kernel PCA\, and UMAP. Furthermore\, one of our feature selection algorithms strictly generalizes a recent Fourier-based feature selection mechanism (Heidari et al.\, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory\, 2022)\, yet at significantly reduced complexity. \n\n\n\n 
URL:https://brias.be/event/brias-seminar-closing-ceremony/
LOCATION:BrIAS\, Boulevard Général Jacques 210\, Ixelles\, Brussels\, 1050\, Belgium
CATEGORIES:Programme Events
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