Tiago Guiomar Ribeiro
Robot Animation & Human-Robot Interaction Technology
Lisbon, Portugal
I am an eclectic engineer who’s major pursuit is the connection between arts and intelligent, interactive technology.
My major work has been on robots that interact with people, in various contexts such as entertainment, education, personal- or labour- assistance, etc.
Within those fields, I have accumulated 8 years of expertise in animation and behaviour management technology for autonomous social robots.
Technically my expertise includes programming lower-level software that controls robots, to high-level animation tools and plug-ins that are suitable for non-technical personnel and end-users, such as artists and psychologists, and also all the middleware that is required to integrate such tools and robots with socially-aware artificial intelligence that drives the interaction.

In summary, my job is to create technology that allows creating such artificial intelligence creatures.
My connection with the arts is very personal, and is driven in most part by my passion for animation, but also for digital film and photography, three particular fields on which I am mostly self-taught and also explore as a hobby. These creative abilities and understanding, allied with my technical background, have allowed me to stand together with both artists, roboticists and software-engineers, to bring them together and build a bridge between all those worlds.
By working together and in multi-disciplinary settings, we are better able to materialize our imagination into real, physical achievements, and to push all those fields forward into the future.
Experience
2018
Robot Animation and Unity Engine
Consultor & Developer
Gagosian Gallery, NYC, USA
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2018/urs-fischer-play/
HRI Architecture
Consultor
Högskolan Väst, Sweden
https://www.researchgate.net/project/START-Student-Tutor-And-Robot-Tutee
2011-2017
Robot Animation & HRI
Technical Direction, R&D
GAIPS Lab @ INESC-ID, Portugal
http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/
2012-2015
EMOTE EU FP7 Project
Research Assistant,
Architecture Design & Development,
Behaviour Management & Animation
GAIPS Lab @ INESC-ID, Portugal
http://www.emote-project.eu
2011-2012
LIREC EU FP7 Project
Research Assistant,
Robot Animation System
GAIPS Lab @ INESC-ID, Portugal
http://www.lirec.eu
Skills

Education
2014-2018
PhD in Computer Science & Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon
Thesis: Creating the Illusion of Life in Autonomous Social Robots
(to be published)
2008-2011
MSc in Computer Science & Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon
Major in Multimedia Systems / Game Development
Minor in Intelligent Systems / Artificial Intelligence
Dissertation: Animating a highly articulated virtual human skeleton with biomechanically-inspired movement constraints in realtime
2004-2008
BSc in Computer Science & Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon