Carme Torras

Carme Torras (www.iri.upc.edu/people/torras) is a robotics researcher and novelist. She studied mathematics at the University of Barcelona and computer science at the University of Massachusetts, and she currently heads the Perception and Manipulation group at the Robotics Institute (CSIC-UPC) in Barcelona. A member of Academia Europaea and of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, she writes scientific works on robotics and artificial intelligence in English and fiction in Catalan, and some of her novels and short stories have been translated into English, Spanish and Italian.

On the scientific front, Prof. Torras has published five books and about three hundred papers in the areas of robot kinematics, computer vision, geometric reasoning, machine learning and manipulation planning. She was Associate Vice-President for Publications of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), and she is currently Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

On the literary front, her novels "Pedres de toc" and "Miracles perversos" won the Primera Columna award and the Ferran Canyameres award to the best thriller, respectively. Her most celebrated novel, "La mutació sentimental", won the Manuel de Pedrolo award and the Ictineu award to the best Catalan science-fiction novel published in 2008. This novel was translated into Spanish (2012) and will appear in English with the title "The Vestigial Heart" published by MIT Press in March 2018.

A member of the Catalan Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, Carme is convinced that science fiction may play an important role in generating debate and public opinion on the social implications of our increasing interaction with robots and AI apps. Her last novel, "Enxarxats" (2017), is a disturbing story about the possibilities of the Internet and the responsibilities and consequences of our constant activity within the network; and "The Vestigial Heart" includes an appendix with a list of ethics questions raised by the book, as well as online materials to foster debate or teach a course on the ethics of social robotics.