The Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) will host the first European- Commission funded European Robotics League (ERL) tournament for service robots to be held in the UK.

Two teams from the BRL and Birmingham will pitch their robots against each other in a series of events from 26 and 30 June.

Robots designed to support people with care-related tasks in the home will be put to the test in a simulated home test bed.

The assisted living robots of the two teams will face various challenges, including understanding natural speech and finding and retrieving objects for the user.

The robots will also have to greet visitors at the door appropriately, such as welcoming a doctor on their visit, or turning away unwanted visitors.

Associate Professor Praminda Caleb-Solly, Theme Leader for Assistive Robotics at the BRL said, “The lessons learned during the competition will contribute to how robots in the future help people, such as those with ageing-related impairments and those with other disabilities, live independently in their own homes for as long as possible.

“This is particularly significant with the growing shortage of carers available to provide support for an ageing populations.”

The BRL, the host of the UK’s first ERL Service Robots tournament, is a joint initiative of the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol. The many research areas include swarm robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles, driverless cars, medical robotics and robotic sensing for touch and vision. BRL’s assisted living research group is developing interactive assistive robots as part of an ambient smart home ecosystem to support independent living.

The ERL Service Robots tournament will be held in the BRL’s Anchor Robotics Personalised Assisted Living Studio, which was set up to develop, test and evaluate assistive robotic and other technologies in a realistic home environment.

The studio was recently certified as a test bed by the ERL, which runs alongside similar competitions for industrial robots and for emergency robots, which includes vehicles that can search for and rescue people in disaster-response scenarios.

The two teams in the Bristol event will be Birmingham Autonomous Robotics Club (BARC) led by Sean Bastable from the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, and the Healthcare Engineering and Assistive Robotics Technology and Services (HEARTS) team from the BRL led by PhD Student Zeke Steer.

BARC has developed its own robotics platform, Dora, and HEARTS will use a TIAGo Steel robot from PAL Robotics with a mix of bespoke and proprietary software.

The Bristol event will be open for public viewing in the BRL on the afternoon of the 29th of June 2017 (Bookable via EventBrite), and include short tours of the assisted living studio for the attendees. It will be held during UK Robotics Week, on 24-30 June 2017, when there will be a nationwide programme of robotics and automation events.

The BRL will also be organising focus groups on 28 and 29 June 2017 (Bookable via EventBrite and here) as part of the UK Robotics Week, to demonstrate assistive robots and their functionality, and seek the views of carers and older adults on these assistive technologies, exploring further applications and integration of such robots into care scenarios.

The European Commission-funded European Robotics League (ERL) is the successor to the RoCKIn, euRathlon and EuRoC robotics competitions, all funded by the EU and designed to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics. The ERL is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. See: https://www.eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/

The ERL is part of the SPARC public-private partnership set up by the European Commission and the euRobotics association to extend Europe’s leadership in civilian robotics. SPARC’s €700 million of funding from the Commission in 2014̶20 is being combined with €1.4 billion of funding from European industry. See: http://www.eu-robotics.net/sparc

euRobotics is a European Commission-funded non-profit organisation which promotes robotics research and innovation for the benefit of Europe’s economy and society. It is based in Brussels and has more than 250 member organisations. See: www.eu-robotics.net

BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Credit: University of Bristol

Making an assistive robot partner expressive and communicative is likely to make it more satisfying to work with and lead to users trusting it more, even if it makes mistakes, a new study suggests.

But the research also shows that giving robots human-like traits could have a flip side – users may even lie to the robot in order to avoid hurting its feelings.

These were the main findings of the study I undertook as part of my MSc in Human Computer Interaction at University College London (UCL), with the objective of designing robotic assistants that people can trust. I’m presenting the research at the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) later this month.

With the help of my supervisors, Professors Nadia Berthouze at UCL and Kerstin Eder at the University of Bristol, I constructed an experiment with a humanoid assistive robot helping users to make an omelette. The robot was tasked with passing the eggs, salt and oil but dropped one of the polystyrene eggs in two of the conditions and then attempted to make amends.

The aim was to investigate how a robot may recover a users’ trust when it makes a mistake and how it can communicate its erroneous behaviour to somebody who is working with it, either at home or at work.

BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Credit: University of Bristol

The somewhat surprising result suggests that a communicative, expressive robot is preferable for the majority of users to a more efficient, less error prone one, despite it taking 50 per cent longer to complete the task.

Users reacted well to an apology from the robot that was able to communicate, and were particularly receptive to its sad facial expression which is likely to have reassured them that it ‘knew’ it had made a mistake.

At the end of the interaction, the communicative robot was programmed to ask participants whether they would give it the job of kitchen assistant, but they could only answer yes or no and were unable to qualify their answers.

Some were reluctant to answer and most appeared very uncomfortable. One person was under the impression that the robot looked sad when he said ‘no’, when it had not been programmed to appear so. Another complained of emotional blackmail and a third went as far as to lie to the robot.

Their reactions would suggest that, having seen the robot display human-like emotion when the egg dropped, many participants were now pre-conditioned to expect a similar reaction and therefore hesitated to say no; they were mindful of the possibility of a display of further human-like distress.

The research underlines that human-like attributes, such as regret, can be powerful tools in negating dissatisfaction but we must identify with care which specific traits we want to focus on and replicate. If there are no ground rules then we may end up with robots with different personalities, just like the people designing them.

BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Credit: University of Bristol

“Trust in our counterparts is fundamental for successful interaction, says Kerstin Eder, who leads the Verification and Validation for Safety in Robots research theme at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. “This study gives key insights into how communication and emotional expressions from robots can mitigate the impact of unexpected behaviour in collaborative robotics. Complementing thorough verification and validation with sound understanding of these human factors will help engineers design robotic assistants that people can trust.”

The study was aligned with the EPSRC funded project Trustworthy Robotic Assistants, where new verification and validation techniques are being developed to ensure safety and trustworthiness of the machines that will enhance our quality of life in the future.

The IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), takes place from 26 to 31 August in New York City, and the study – Believing in BERT: Using expressive communication to enhance trust and counteract operational error in physical Human-Robot Interaction’ by Adriana Hamacher, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Anthony G. Pipe and Kerstin Eder – will be published by the IEEE as part of the conference proceedings, available via the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

A pre-publication copy of the research paper is available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.08817.pdf

The scientist is looking at the error message of the giant robot’s operating system.

In this video lecture Carme Torras, Research Professor at the Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC) looks at the process of working on assistive robots employed as helpers to disabled or elderly people, shopping helpers, cleaning aids, even co-workers in workshops and factories. Her research in the Perception and Manipulation group focuses on enhancing the perception, learning, and planning capabilities of robots in human environments.

Torras features several key issues in her lecture: safety in home environments, capability to manipulate with deformable objects (for example, clothes), tolerance to inaccurate actions, goal-directed executions, and capability to actively collaborate with humans. One of the main challenges of developing assistive robots are system adaptations for ‘non-experts’ to program the robots.

The final part of her lecture tackles the debate concerning assistive robotics, asking: what are the ethical and social implications for having robots in people’s lives . How will human nature change with increasing H-R interaction? Her answer leads into science fiction and current depictions between robots and humans in popular culture.

Credits: Institut de Robòtica
Informàtica Industrial, CSIC-UPC

Carme Torras is Research Professor at the Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC). She received M.Sc. degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Universitat de Barcelona and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). Prof. Torras has published five books and about two hundred papers in the areas of robot kinematics, computer vision, geometric reasoning, machine learning and manipulation planning. She has been local project leader of several European projects in the frontier between AI and Robotics, among which the FP6 IP project “Perception, Action and COgnition through Learning of Object-Action Complexes” (PACO-PLUS), and the FP7 STREP projects “GARdeNIng with a Cognitive System” (GARNICS) and “Intelligent observation and execution of Actions and manipulations” (IntellAct).

She was awarded the Narcís Monturiol Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2000, and she became ECCAI Fellow in 2007, member of Academia Europaea in 2010, and member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona in 2013. Prof. Torras was IEEE RAS Associate Vice-President for Publication Activities (2012-13) and she is currently Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Torras C. IJARS Video Series: Robotic Assistants: Science meets Fiction [online video]. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 2016, 13:V1. DOI: 10.5772/62467

Actor Frank Langella on the left; robot analyst Frank Tobe on the right.

Finally, a few days ago, a group of us went to see it and, although it was sad and sweet, and generally a fun and entertaining movie to watch, it was a disappointment to me on many levels.

The story is about an older guy living alone in a rural area. His son drives a long distance to check up on him once a week and the visits aren’t pleasant. His daughter is off in some foreign land taking photos. His ex-wife is long gone. Frank is grumpy, slovenly and abusive except — with the local librarian whom he likes.

The story brightens when the son gives Frank a robot to help take care of him. It is purposed to lead him away from his curmudgeon state (which we later learn is dementia) toward a more healthy life. Frank, who at first hates the idea, finds that the robot is trainable and can do some things better than he can, like pick a lock or crack the combination on a safe. This excites him to once again do what he used to do: be a jewel thief. It’s a mundane Robin Hood type plot but the two principal actors (Frank Langella and Susan Sarandon) make it a better film because they played their roles so convincingly. I don’t want to tell more of the story because the movie is worth seeing.

From a robot enthusiast’s point of view, however, the movie left a lot to be desired. First, and I hate to break this to you, the robot wasn’t a robot after all. It may have looked like Honda’s Asimo, but it was really Rachael Ma dressed up in a robot costume made by a Hollywood effects company (Altrerian). She walked and moved just like Asimo and moved her head empathically during periods of dialogue but it wasn’t even a speaking part for her; a male actor read the lines that were the robot’s voice.

Regarding the robot’s voice, the director ended up printing out all of the robot lines in sequence and just having Peter Sarsgaard read them straight through without watching the scenes. It yielded the best balance and consistency for their goal of robot-like speech. If it ended up sounding a little inhuman, that was fine.

The real issues about ethical, psychological and social concerns of a robot providing assistance and life coaching for a person with serious aging and psychological issues, or about a robot assisting or participating in illegal activities with that person were only lightly touched upon. Instead the issues were defined by the paradigm of living alone or in a residential care facility.

When asked by a reporter from The Christian Science Monitor about the ethical question of having robots take care of the elderly and replace human caregivers, director Jake Schreier replied:

I don’t have an answer for that. I mean, we certainly touch on it. I think the key for [screenplay writer Christopher] Ford and I was to sort of make it … you could call it a “future agnostic” movie. This is in the sense that it’s not saying that robots are going to kill us, and it’s not saying that they’re the answer to all our problems. I think there are some issues with them, and there are some amazing things that they can do—and the future is like that. I think it’s important to not be reflexively afraid of the future, to try to take in what’s coming and try to look at all sides of it and see what the positives and negatives are. Hopefully the film lets you have that distance and form an opinion or let you have your own ideas about it, but it isn’t leading you too strongly down one path or the other.

In another interview that appeared in The Huffington Post, the reporter asked Schreirer and Ford how they decided on the simple design of the robot, who looks a lot like Honda’s walking ASIMO robot, and whether they ever considered other designs that were more futuristic and high tech.

JS: The segment of robot design aimed at elder care seems to be oddly focused on these little white spacemen. It’s not just the ASIMO, Toyota has a similar one too, and there are others. We just felt it made sense to stay in that vein. I think they benefit from their simplicity — it allows us to project more emotion onto them.

CF: The robot always had that kind of design, even from the original short I did in film school. I was taken by the image of this tiny little space suit-looking man walking around through a dusty old cottage. I know Jake always liked that image and it was the kernel that we tried to stay true to when we expanded it into a feature.

At the finish of the movie, as the credits rolled, there were cameo videos running alongside the credits showing many service robots doing bits and pieces of home care or assistive tasks. Some of them were caring for the elderly, or interacting with real people playing chess, or cleaning up and doing various tasks. Each video clip was known to me for its limited present-day capability but hopeful for a more efficient and flexible near-term future similar to the futuristic robot in Robot & Frank