Outputs (29)

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.

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.

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.

Designing ethical social robots - A longitudinal field study with older adults (2020)
Journal Article

Emotional deception and emotional attachment are regarded as ethical concerns in human robot interaction. Considering these concerns is essential, particularly as little is known about longitudinal effects of interactions with social robots. We ran a... Read More about Designing ethical social robots - A longitudinal field study with older adults.

Onboard Evolution of Understandable Swarm Behaviors (2019)
Journal Article

Designing the individual robot rules that give rise to desired emergent swarm behaviors is difficult. The common method of running evolutionary algorithms off‐line to automatically discover controllers in simulation suffers from two disadvantages: th... Read More about Onboard Evolution of Understandable Swarm Behaviors.

The need for ethical principles and guidelines in social robots (2019)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This paper stresses the importance of establishing ethical principles regarding possible (psychological) effects of interactions with (social) robots. It highlights existing principles and standards regarding artificial intelligence systems and robot... Read More about The need for ethical principles and guidelines in social robots.

Robot companion for industrial process monitoring based on virtual fixtures (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© 2018 IEEE. In this paper, the use of a monitoring companion is proposed to more efficiently collect the process information during the tuning of industrial systems, and therefore to assist the system integrator in the optimization process for compl... Read More about Robot companion for industrial process monitoring based on virtual fixtures.

Ethical considerations of (contextually) affective robot behaviour (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The use of social robots can bring many benefits, but raises ethical concerns as well. One of these concerns, emotional deception, was investigated in this research. First, affective robot behaviour is validated, followed by a user study to investiga... Read More about Ethical considerations of (contextually) affective robot behaviour.

A two teraflop swarm (2018)
Journal Article

© 2018 Jones, Studley, Hauert and Winfield. We introduce the Xpuck swarm, a research platform with an aggregate raw processing power in excess of two teraflops. The swarm uses 16 e-puck robots augmented with custom hardware that uses the substantial... Read More about A two teraflop swarm.

Towards multimodal interactions: Robot jogging in mixed reality (2017)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). The recent progress made in the field of Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality (AR/MR) has opened new possibilities and approaches to research areas that can benefit from 3D visualization of digital content in... Read More about Towards multimodal interactions: Robot jogging in mixed reality.

Mobile GPGPU acceleration of embodied robot simulation (2015)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. It is desirable for a robot to be able to run on-board simulations of itself in a model of the world to evaluate action consequences and test new controller solutions, but simulation is computatio... Read More about Mobile GPGPU acceleration of embodied robot simulation.

Gathering and presenting social feedback to change domestic electricity consumption (2011)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This paper describes the CHARM Energy Study in which mobile technology is used to study the impact of social group feedback on household energy consumption. We describe the background and rationale behind the study, the technology which supports th... Read More about Gathering and presenting social feedback to change domestic electricity consumption.

CHARM: social norms marketing for energy efficiency (2009)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

UK focus group research with dark/light and non-green consumers explored attitudes to a range of government, charity, manufacturer and retailer sustainability initiatives. The study explored how consumers understand the term 'green' and its relation... Read More about CHARM: social norms marketing for energy efficiency.

Engaging the public with a hybrid puppet (2009)
Journal Article

A puppet with robotic features and emotional expressions can make general audiences think about the role of machines in everyday life.

Heart robot: a public engagement project (2009)
Journal Article

Heart Robot was a public engagement project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The aim of the project was to challenge cultural perceptions of robots, and to stimulate thought and debate in members of the gener... Read More about Heart robot: a public engagement project.