Overview

Gender

male

David Hanson built a worldwide reputation for inventing the world’s most human-like, empathetic, intelligent character robots, inspiring massive media coverage and public acclaim. To accomplish this, Hanson integrated figurative 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, artificial 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. David was featured in the New York Times, Popular Science, Scientific American, WIRED, BBC and CNN. He also received earned awards from NASA, NSF, Tech Titans’ Innovator of the Year, RISD, Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, and the 2005 AAAI first place prize for open interaction of an AI system.

Hanson received his BFA in Film, Animation and Video from the Rhode Island School of Design and his Ph.D. in Interactive Arts and Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas.