Koen Hindriks is Full Professor in the Artificial Intelligence section at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and CIO of the spin-off Interactive Robotics. He is working on realizing a new interaction paradigm using AI by making machines more socially intelligent, using cognitive agent technology and multi-modal interaction. The big question is how to combine symbolic decision and reasoning capabilities (e.g. for dialogue) with sub-symbolic techniques for sensor processing (e.g. computer vision for recognizing emotions). Applications are everywhere in e.g. education, healthcare, retail, government, etc. He has published more than 150 papers on cognitive agent technology. Interaction between man and robot is at the heart of his research and drives the goals of his company. He has developed robots as companions and assistants for healthcare and education, and is developing service robots for business solutions.