All Outputs (44)

Understanding consumer attitudes towards second-hand robots for the home (2024)
Journal Article

As robot numbers in the home increase, creating a market for second-hand robotic systems is essential to reduce the waste impact of the industry. Via a survey, consumer attitudes of United Kingdom participants towards second-hand robots were investig... Read More about Understanding consumer attitudes towards second-hand robots for the home.

On the relationship between benchmarking, standards and certification in robotics and AI (2024)
Book Chapter

Benchmarking, standards and certification are closely related processes. Standards can provide normative requirements that robotics and AI systems may or may not conform to. Certification generally relies upon conformance with one or more standards a... Read More about On the relationship between benchmarking, standards and certification in robotics and AI.

Introducing the concept of repurposing robots; to increase their useful life, reduce waste, and improve sustainability in the robotics industry (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Based on current definitions of electronic waste, the robotics industry faces a future where products created for both business and consumer markets could be required to meet regulations to manage the control of electronic products at the end of thei... Read More about Introducing the concept of repurposing robots; to increase their useful life, reduce waste, and improve sustainability in the robotics industry.

Achieving goals using reward shaping and curriculum learning (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Real-time control for robotics is a popular research area in the reinforcement learning community. Through the use of techniques such as reward shaping, researchers have managed to train online agents across a multitude of domains. Despite these adva... Read More about Achieving goals using reward shaping and curriculum learning.

Roots and models (2023)
Journal Article

One of us comes from dance, the other from robotics, and you would be forgiven for thinking immediately about the YouTube films created by Boston Dynamics. But what connects us is our concern that human-ness is losing ground to machine-ness. To partl... Read More about Roots and models.

Arts and humanities shaping the AI future (2023)
Preprint / Working Paper

The organisation of this event was motivated by the view there should be more Arts and Humanities (A&H) perspectives, methods and approaches involved in shaping our future relationship with AI technology. Our invitation was sent to the most diver... Read More about Arts and humanities shaping the AI future.

European robotics league: Benchmarking through smart city robot competitions (2023)
Book Chapter

The SciRoc project, started in 2018, is an EU-H2020 funded project supporting the European Robotics League (ERL) and builds on the success of the EU-FP7/H2020 projects RoCKIn, euRathlon, EuRoC and ROCKEU2. The ERL is a framework for robot competition... Read More about European robotics league: Benchmarking through smart city robot competitions.

Saltwater-responsive bubble artificial muscles using superabsorbent polymers (2022)
Journal Article

Robots operating in changing underwater environments may be required to adapt to these varying conditions. In tidal estuaries, for example, where the degree of salinity cycles in step with the level of the water, a robot may need to adapt its behavio... Read More about Saltwater-responsive bubble artificial muscles using superabsorbent polymers.

Benchmarking robots in smart cities (2022)
Journal Article

In order for robots to become integrated into society, we need to be able to prove that robots do their jobs reliably. Robot benchmarking competitions in smart cities offer a glimpse into our future.

A new perspective on robot ethics through investigating human–robot interactions with older adults (2021)
Journal Article

This work explored the use of human–robot interaction research to investigate robot ethics. A longitudinal human–robot interaction study was conducted with self-reported healthy older adults to determine whether expression of artificial emotions by a... Read More about A new perspective on robot ethics through investigating human–robot interactions with older adults.

Technology and risk considerations in shaping future drone legislation (2021)
Journal Article

The global aviation industry has decades-old and highly successful legislation enforcing safety in conventional manned aerospace. This framework has been evolved gradually around a set of mature technologies with particular goals and implementations,... Read More about Technology and risk considerations in shaping future drone legislation.

Onshoring through automation; Perpetuating inequality? (2021)
Journal Article

Many analyses of the ethical, legal and societal impacts of robotics are focussed on Europe and the United States. In this article I discuss the impacts of robotics on developing nations in a connected world, and make the case that international equi... Read More about Onshoring through automation; Perpetuating inequality?.

Pulsed thermography digital motion stabilization for the unmanned vehicle inspection of solar farms and GFRP wind blades through UAVs and UGVs (2021)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The quality control of structures and fuselages in both the wind-turbine and solar sectors is a fundamental part that allows a lifetime assessment of their elements, from its initial assembly to the recurring inspection cycles. Automating the active... Read More about Pulsed thermography digital motion stabilization for the unmanned vehicle inspection of solar farms and GFRP wind blades through UAVs and UGVs.

Twin delayed hierarchical actor-critic (2021)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) addresses the common problem in sparse rewards environments of having to manually craft a reward function. We present a modified version of the Hierarchical Actor-Critic (HAC) architecture called Twin Delayed... Read More about Twin delayed hierarchical actor-critic.

ShearTouch - Towards a wearable tactile feedback device to provide continuous shear force sensation in real time (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Force feedback in current teleoperation systems typically only provides haptic/kinaesthetic feedback to operators in the form of normal forces. However, it is proposed in this paper that the introduction of shear (or lateral) force feedback to operat... Read More about ShearTouch - Towards a wearable tactile feedback device to provide continuous shear force sensation in real time.

Robots in Smart Cities (2020)
Book Chapter

Robots and Smart Cities seem like natural partners. They both gather data and process it, and could provide added value to each other in a variety of ways. In this chapter, we briefly explore some potential use cases featuring the smart city as an in... Read More about Robots in Smart Cities.

ELSA in industrial robotics (2020)
Journal Article

Purpose of Review Industry is changing; converging technologies allow a fourth Industrial Revolution, where it is envisaged that robots will work alongside humans. We investigate how the research community is responding to the ethical, legal, and so... Read More about ELSA in industrial robotics.

Usability study of a robot companion for monitoring industrial processes (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

In this paper we present the findings of a usability study for a monitoring robotic unit tele-operated via a virtual fixtures (VF) based control framework. The study aims at investigating the impact of VF on the robot navigation as well as the impact... Read More about Usability study of a robot companion for monitoring industrial processes.

Speech related accessibility issues in social robots (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This work describes an incidental finding from a longitudinal Human-Robot Interaction study that was investigating whether a robot showing emotions during interactions with older adults was perceived differently than to a robot that did not display e... Read More about Speech related accessibility issues in social robots.

The impact of affective verbal expressions in social robots (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This research investigates whether there is an ethical concern in robots misrepresenting their internal state through speech. Participants were asked to discuss their food preferences with a robot, where the robot would either respond through facts o... Read More about The impact of affective verbal expressions in social robots.