Carolina Science Cafe | Spatial Intelligence & AI

Spatial Intelligence and Embodied AI: Understanding and Interacting with the Real World

Join us for the next installment of the Carolina Science Cafe, Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s free, current science awareness program. For the December cafe, we will welcome Richard Marks from the UNC School of Data Science and Society to discuss his work on generative AI and mixed reality (XR) technology.

The recent advancements in generative AI have enabled many exciting new digital applications such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Midjourney. So what’s next? Spatial intelligence enables computers to perceive and interpret the real world and share the same physical context that we as people just take for granted. Embodied AI takes this one step further by using this perception to plan and execute actions and then learn from this interaction with the surroundings. These capabilities enable many new applications, from self-driving cars to graphical chatbots to personal robots.

Dr. Marks will describe these new directions and explain how they connect to his previous work in computer vision, virtual reality, and physical simulation. The talk will highlight many prototypes and past research from the internal labs of Sony and Google.

Designed for adults, this program explores science topics making national and international headlines and offers the chance to meet the experts behind the headlines. The Carolina Science Cafe is hosted at Haw River Tab & Table in Carrboro on Tuesday, December 3rd, starting at 6:00 p.m. with light appetizers available for all attendees. Parking is available in the parking deck behind the building if the lot out front if full.

About the Speaker

Dr. Richard Marks is a new professor at UNC in the School of Data Science and Society. Previous to UNC, he was a director and technical project lead at Google, overseeing an applied research team.  Before that, Richard was at PlayStation R&D where he founded the Magic Lab and helped create the EyeToy, PlayStation Move, and PlayStation VR. He is an inventor on over 100 patents. He studied avionics at MIT then got his PhD from Stanford in underwater robotics. Currently, Richard is teaching an introductory data science class; last year, he taught Virtual Reality and 3D graphics. His research focuses on the combination of AI and XR.

The Carolina Science Cafe is produced by Morehead Planetarium and Science Center and sponsored by the UNC Chapter of Sigma Xi.

You do not need to register…just show up!