David Hanson Ph.D. has built a worldwide reputa- tion for inventing the world’s most human-like, empathetic, intelligent character robots, inspiring massive media coverage and public acclaim. To accomplish this, Hanson integrated gurative arts with science and engineering, and invented novel skin materials, facial expression mechanisms, and intelligent software to animate the robots in face to face interactions with people.

Hanson started as a Walt Disney Imagineer, working as both a sculptor and a technical consultant in robotics. As a researcher, he published dozens of papers in materials science, articial intelligence, cognitive science, and robotics journals — including SPIE, IEEE, the International Journal of Cognitive Science, IROS, AAAI, AI magazine and more. He wrote two books including “Humanizing Robots” and received several patents. Hanson was featured in the New York Times, Popular Science, Scientic American, WIRED, BBC and CNN. He also received earned awards from NASA, NSF, Tech Titans’ Innova- tor of the Year, RISD, Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, and the 2005 AAAI rst place prize for open interac- tion of an AI system.