Dr. Buddhika Jayasekara and Ravindu Bandara, a postgraduate research student presented two research papers at 2018 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC2018) held from 7-10th October in Miyazaki, Japan.  The two papers titled “Grounding Object Attributes Through Interactive Discussion for Building Cognitive Maps in Service Robots” and “Identifying Approaching Behavior of a Person During a Conversation: A Human Study for Improving Human-Robot Interaction” are co-authored by Bhagya Samarakoon, Viraj Muthugala and Dr. D. P. Chandima. These are contributions of the research project on development  of  Moratuwa  Intelligent  Robot (MIRob),  an  intelligent  service  robot  for domestic environments.
IEEE SMC conference is the flagship conference of the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society of IEEE. This research was funded by a Senate Research Grants SRC/CAP/2017/03 and SRC/LT/2018/20 provided by the University of Moratuwa.

A research paper titled ‘Proxemics and Approach Evaluation by Service Robot Based on User Behavior in Domestic Environment’’ was presented at the 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) held from Oct 01 - 05 in Madrid, Spain by S. M. Bhagya P. Samarakoon, a postgraduate research student and Dr. M. A. Viraj J. Muthugala  in the Department of Electrical Engineering . The manuscript was written by S. M. Bhagya P. Samarakoon,  H. P. Chapa Sirithunge and M. A. Viraj J. Muthugala under the supervision of Dr. A.G. Buddhika P.  Jayasekara.  The authors are from the Intelligent Service Robotics Group- Department of Electrical Engineering and they  are  working  on  the  development of  Moratuwa  Intelligent  Robot (MIRob),  an  intelligent  service  robot  for domestic environments.
The IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) is one of the largest and most impacting robotics research conferences worldwide. This year over 4000 participants were presented and the conference had the largest robotic exhibition in the history of IROS. IROS has rank no. 5 in top 20 sources of robotics sub-category of Google Scholar Metrics where h5 index is 71. The research was funded by a Senate Research Long Term Grant (SRC/LT/2018/20) of University of Moratuwa.