3 July 2013
Researchers from the University of Hertfordshire are part of a new £1.2 million project that aims to ensure that future robotic systems can be trusted by humans.
Robots as
active “helpers”
Robots are
increasingly being developed to serve as active "helpers" in
situations where humans require assistance to undertake certain tasks – tasks such
as being home companions for older people or personal care robots to help
patients during their recovery. This
means that the humans involved must be fully confident in robot behaviour if
human-robot teamwork is to become viable and productive.
"Trustworthy Robotic
Assistants"
is a three and a half year project funded by the Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) that will explore how robots can participate
in sophisticated interactions with humans in an increasingly safe and
trustworthy manner. It will address issues concerning the barriers between
robots and humans that have hampered the development of human-robot
interactions, and will look at not only whether the robot makes safe moves but
whether it knowingly or deliberately makes unsafe moves.
Safety issues
and trustworthy behaviour
Professor
Kerstin Dautenhahn, from the University of Hertfordshire’s Adaptive Systems Research
Group, said: “People need to be able to trust robots that they come into
contact with. As part of this new
project, our research team here in Hertfordshire will focus on safety issues
and trustworthy behaviour in the application of robots as home companions. This
research will be carried out in our Robot House where we can observe these
behaviours in a realistic environment.”
Hertfordshire
team internationally recognised
The
Adaptive Systems Research Team at the University is internationally recognised
for their research into adaptive systems, particularly for robots in therapy
and education, 'affective' and expressive interfaces between humans and
machines, and robotic agents that can learn by imitation.
The Hertfordshire
researchers have been involved in several European projects since 2004,
investigating how robots can provide socially acceptable and useful assistance
as a home companion. This research has
been conducted in the University’s Robot House, a domestic smart home
particularly suitable for human-robot interaction experiments. The research
team is currently coordinating the EU project “ACCOMPANY” which is developing a
robotic home companion for supporting assistive living of elderly people in
their homes.
The Trustworthy
Robotic Assistants project involves teams from the University of
Hertfordshire’s Adaptive
Systems Research Group (involving Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and Dr. Farshid
Amirabdollahian), the University of Liverpool’s Centre
for Autonomous Systems Technology (led by Professor Michael Fisher and
Dr. Clare Dixon, and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, as well as Industrial
partners including the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA) and RU
Robots Limited.
Professor
Michael Fisher, principal investigator at Liverpool and Director of the
University's Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology, said: "The
assessment of robotic trustworthiness has many facets, from the safety analysis
of robot behaviours, through physical reliability of interactions, to human
perceptions of such safe operation."
Liverpool’s
researchers are internationally recognised for their research on logic, formal
analysis, and the foundations of autonomy and, both within the
multidisciplinary Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology and within the
"Trustworthy Robotic Assistants" project, their role is to provide a
rigorous formal basis for developing reliable, safe and trustworthy autonomous
systems.
