Alan Winfield's Outputs (49)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Toward controllable morphogenesis in large robot swarms (2019)
Journal Article

Morphogenetic engineering aims to achieve functional, self-organized but controllable structures in human-designed systems. Controlling the structures is crucial if they are to be used for real-world applications. Building on previous work on morphog... Read More about Toward controllable morphogenesis in large robot swarms.

Machine ethics: The design and governance of ethical AI and autonomous systems (2019)
Journal Article

© 1963-2012 IEEE. The so-called fourth industrial revolution and its economic and societal implications are no longer solely an academic concern, but a matter for political as well as public debate. Characterized as the convergence of robotics, AI, a... Read More about Machine ethics: The design and governance of ethical AI and autonomous systems.

On proactive, transparent and verifiable ethical reasoning for robots (2019)
Journal Article

Previous work on ethical machine reasoning has largely been theoretical, and where such systems have been implemented it has in general been only initial proofs of principle. Here we address the question of desirable attributes for such systems to im... Read More about On proactive, transparent and verifiable ethical reasoning for robots.

Ethical standards in Robotics and AI (2019)
Journal Article

A new generation of ethical standards in robotics and artificial intelligence is emerging as a direct response to a growing awareness of the ethical, legal and societal impact of the fields. But what exactly are these ethical standards and how do the... Read More about Ethical standards in Robotics and AI.

Ethical governance is essential to building trust in robotics and artificial intelligence systems (2018)
Journal Article

© 2018 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. This paper explores the question of ethical governance for robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We outline a roadmap-which links a number of elements, including e... Read More about Ethical governance is essential to building trust in robotics and artificial intelligence systems.