Professor Alan Winfield's Outputs (14)

On robots with reasoning capabilities and human-like appearance and behaviour: Implications for accident investigations (2025)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

AI-enhanced reasoning enables robots to create detailed accounts of their own situated behaviour as well as the behaviour of other people. This capability is currently employed by robot designers to achieve transparency, trust, and enhance robot soci... Read More about On robots with reasoning capabilities and human-like appearance and behaviour: Implications for accident investigations.

On the ethical governance of swarm robotic systems in the real world (2025)
Journal Article

In this paper, we address the question: what practices would be required for the responsible design and operation of real-world swarm robotic systems? We argue that swarm robotic systems must be developed and operated within a framework of ethical go... Read More about On the ethical governance of swarm robotic systems in the real world.

Consulting an oracle; repurposing robots for the circular economy (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This paper reports a new process which can be used to re-purpose a robot at the end of its primary life. Repurposing a robot enables it to continue delivering value beyond the point at which it might have been otherwise recycled or scrapped. The repu... Read More about Consulting an oracle; repurposing robots for the circular economy.

Editorial: Autonomous (re)production, learning and bio-inspired robotics workshop (2024)
Journal Article

Evolutionary robotics as a modelling tool in evolutionary biology (2024)
Journal Article

The use of evolutionary robotic systems to model aspects of evolutionary biology is well-established. Yet, few studies have asked the question, “What kind of model is an evolutionary robotic system?” This paper seeks to address that question in sever... Read More about Evolutionary robotics as a modelling tool in evolutionary biology.

Towards a unified framework for software-hardware integration in evolutionary robotics (2024)
Journal Article

The discrepancy between simulated and hardware experiments, the reality gap, is a challenge in evolutionary robotics. While strategies have been proposed to address this gap in fixed-body robots, they are not viable when dealing with populations and... Read More about Towards a unified framework for software-hardware integration in evolutionary robotics.

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.

Towards robots with common sense (2024)
Book Chapter

This study explores the question: could a robot be equipped with an artificial “common sense” and if so, how? The study outlines a method for equipping social robots with an artificial theory of mind. The method is based on a simulation-based interna... Read More about Towards robots with common sense.

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.

Variable autonomy through responsible robotics: Design guidelines and research agenda (2024)
Journal Article

Physically embodied artificial agents, or robots, are being incorporated into various practical and social contexts, from self-driving cars for personal transportation to assistive robotics in social care. To enable these systems to better perform un... Read More about Variable autonomy through responsible robotics: Design guidelines and research agenda.

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.

Evaluation of frameworks that combine evolution and learning to design robots in complex morphological spaces (2023)
Journal Article

Jointly optimising both the body and brain of a robot is known to be a challenging task, especially when attempting to evolve designs in simulation that will subsequently be built in the real world. To address this, it is increasingly common to combi... Read More about Evaluation of frameworks that combine evolution and learning to design robots in complex morphological spaces.

Practical hardware for evolvable robots (2023)
Journal Article

The evolutionary robotics field offers the possibility of autonomously generating robots that are adapted to desired tasks by iteratively optimising across successive generations of robots with varying configurations until a high-performing candidate... Read More about Practical hardware for evolvable robots.

Ethical assessment of a hospital disinfection robot (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Robots have the potential to deliver very positive impacts for society, however, it's critical that in preparing for real-world deployments, we recognize and take steps to mitigate against the potential harms, both direct and indirect, that they may... Read More about Ethical assessment of a hospital disinfection robot.