Dr Hooman Samani is a roboticist specialising in AI-Driven Social Service Robotics based in London, United Kingdom. He is a Senior Lecturer in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Hertfordshire and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Throughout his career, he has held various academic and industry positions, including as a Lecturer in Machine Learning and AI for Robotics at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom; an Associate Professor and founder and director of the AIART Lab (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technology Laboratory) at National Taipei University of Taiwan; a Research Fellow at the Keio-NUS CUTE Centre, a joint research centre between National University of Singapore and Keio University of Japan; an Engineer at Posco in South Korea and a Robotics Researcher at Philips in the Netherlands and Fraunhofer in Germany. He holds a PhD in Robotics from the National University of Singapore.

He actively contributes to various robotics and AI related journals and conferences, serving as an editorial board member, organising committee member, workshop organiser, and reviewer. He has also gained valuable industry experience through his work at Philips and Posco, as well as R&D projects in different industrial sectors. He has been featured in international media such as Discovery Channel, New Scientist, and Reuters for his pioneering work in robotics. In addition to his research, he has participated in and won several international RoboCup competitions.

He is an advocate of the philosophy that “the best way to predict the future is to create it”. He relishes the serendipity of traveling the world without (much) planning, as a practical application of SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) and Reinforcement Learning (Taking actions in an environment to maximize the notion of cumulative reward). In his free time, he plays the guitar when he feels like it and tennis when he doesn’t.