Alan Winfield's Outputs (82)

Ethical risk assessment for social robots: Case studies in smart robot toys (2022)
Book Chapter

Risk Assessment is a well known and powerful method for discovering and mitigating risks, and hence improving safety. Ethical Risk Assessment uses the same approach, but extends the scope of risk to cover ethical risks in addition to safety risks. In... Read More about Ethical risk assessment for social robots: Case studies in smart robot toys.

IEEE Standard for Transparency of Autonomous Systems (2022)
Other

Measurable, testable levels of transparency, so that autonomous systems can be objectively assessed, and levels of compliance determined, are described in this standard.

Morpho-evolution with learning using a controller archive as an inheritance mechanism (2022)
Journal Article

Most work in evolutionary robotics centres on evolving a controller for a fixed body-plan. However, previous studies suggest that simultaneously evolving both controller and body-plan could open up many interesting possibilities. However, the joint o... Read More about Morpho-evolution with learning using a controller archive as an inheritance mechanism.

Experiments in artificial culture: from noisy imitation to storytelling robots (2021)
Journal Article

This paper presents a series of experiments in collective social robotics, spanning more than 10 years, with the long-term aim of building embodied models of (aspects) of cultural evolution. Initial experiments demonstrated the emergence of behaviour... Read More about Experiments in artificial culture: from noisy imitation to storytelling robots.

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.

Robot narratives (2021)
Book Chapter

There is evidence that humans understand how the world goes through narrative. We discuss what it might mean for embodied robots to understand the world, and communicate that understanding, in a similar manner. We suggest an architecture for adding n... Read More about Robot narratives.

IEEE P7001: A proposed standard on transparency (2021)
Journal Article

This paper describes IEEE P7001, a new draft standard on transparency of autonomous systems. In the paper, we outline the development and structure of the draft standard. We present the rationale for transparency as a measurable, testable property. W... Read More about IEEE P7001: A proposed standard on transparency.

Governing AI safety through independent audits (2021)
Journal Article

Highly automated systems are becoming omnipresent. They range in function from self-driving vehicles to advanced medical diagnostics and afford many benefits. However, there are assurance challenges that have become increasingly visible in high-profi... Read More about Governing AI safety through independent audits.

Role-play as responsible robotics: The virtual witness testimony role-play interview for investigating hazardous human-robot interactions (2021)
Journal Article

The development of responsible robotics requires paying attention to responsibility within the research process in addition to responsibility as the outcome of research. This paper describes the preparation and application of a novel method to explor... Read More about Role-play as responsible robotics: The virtual witness testimony role-play interview for investigating hazardous human-robot interactions.

Negative updating applied to the best-of-n problem with noisy qualities (2021)
Journal Article

The ability to perform well in the presence of noise is an important consideration when evaluating the effectiveness of a collective decision-making framework. Any system deployed for real-world applications will have to perform well in complex and u... Read More about Negative updating applied to the best-of-n problem with noisy qualities.

Towards autonomous robot evolution (2020)
Book Chapter

We outline a perspective on the future of evolutionary robotics and discuss a long-term vision regarding robots that evolve in the real world. We argue that such systems offer significant potential for advancing both science and engineering. For scie... Read More about Towards autonomous robot evolution.

Robot accident investigation: A case study in responsible robotics (2020)
Book Chapter

Robot accidents are inevitable. Although rare, they have been happening since assembly line robots were first introduced in the 1960s. But a new generation of social robots is now becoming commonplace. Equipped with sophisticated embedded artificial... Read More about Robot accident investigation: A case study in responsible robotics.

Bootstrapping artificial evolution to design robots for autonomous fabrication (2020)
Journal Article

A long-term vision of evolutionary robotics is a technology enabling the evolution of entire autonomous robotic ecosystems that live and work for long periods in challenging and dynamic environments without the need for direct human oversight. Evolut... Read More about Bootstrapping artificial evolution to design robots for autonomous fabrication.

Hardware design for autonomous robot evolution (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The long term goal of the Autonomous Robot Evolution (ARE) project is to create populations of physical robots, in which both the controllers and body plans are evolved. The transition of evolutionary designs from purely simulation environments into... Read More about Hardware design for autonomous robot evolution.

Evolution of diverse, manufacturable robot body plans (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Advances in rapid prototyping have opened up new avenues of research within Evolutionary Robotics in which not only controllers but also the body plans (morphologies) of robots can evolve in real-time and real-space. However, this also introduces new... Read More about Evolution of diverse, manufacturable robot body plans.

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.

Sample and time efficient policy learning with CMA-ES and Bayesian Optimisation (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

In evolutionary robot systems where morphologies and controllers of real robots are simultaneously evolved, it is clear that there is likely to be requirements to refine the inherited controller of a ‘newborn’ robot in order to better align it to its... Read More about Sample and time efficient policy learning with CMA-ES and Bayesian Optimisation.

Mutual shaping in swarm robotics: User studies in fire and rescue, storage organization, and bridge inspection (2020)
Journal Article

Many real-world applications have been suggested in the swarm robotics literature. However, there is a general lack of understanding of what needs to be done for robot swarms to be useful and trusted by users in reality. This paper aims to investigat... Read More about Mutual shaping in swarm robotics: User studies in fire and rescue, storage organization, and bridge inspection.

Examining profiles for robotic risk assessment: Does a robot's approach to risk affect user trust? (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. As autonomous robots move towards ubiquity, the need for robots to make decisions under risk that are trustworthy becomes increasingly significant; both to aid acceptance and to fully utilise their autonomo... Read More about Examining profiles for robotic risk assessment: Does a robot's approach to risk affect user trust?.

"What could possibly go wrong?": Logging HRI data for robot accident investigation (2020)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This abstract presents proposed experimental work to consider what might be required for an 'ethical black box', essentially a robot data recorder, to inform robot accident investigation processes and the implications for HRI.