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About

Janet Wiles is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of cognitive science, robotics, and artificial intelligence, whose work bridges biological intelligence and computational systems in remarkable ways. Best known for her contributions to brain-inspired robotics and spatial cognition, Wiles has advanced our understanding of how animals and robots navigate, communicate, and interact socially. Her landmark OpenRatSLAM system (2013, 144 citations) translated neuroscientific models of rodent spatial memory into open-source robotic navigation, becoming a foundational resource for the field. Her investigations into cognitive mapping — including how boundary knowledge fuses with path integration in darkness — have deepened understanding of the neural underpinnings of spatial awareness. Wiles also pioneered the Lingodroids project, exploring how robots can evolve shared spatial languages through social interaction. A distinctly creative thread in her work involves rat-robot interaction studies, using autonomous robotic agents to probe animal social behavior in ethically innovative ways. More recently, she has examined how young children learn from and respond to social robots, with implications for educational technology. Across her career, Wiles exemplifies genuinely interdisciplinary science, connecting neuroscience, developmental psychology, and robotics in ways that illuminate intelligence itself.