Professor Alan Winfield's Outputs (40)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?.

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.

"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.

The ARE Robot Fabricator: How to (Re)produce Robots that Can Evolve in the Real World (2019)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The long term vision of the Autonomous Robot Evolution (ARE) project is to create an ecosystem of both virtual and physical robots with evolving brains and bodies. One of the major challenges for such a vision is the need to construct many unique ind... Read More about The ARE Robot Fabricator: How to (Re)produce Robots that Can Evolve in the Real World.

The Dark Side of Ethical Robots (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© 2018 ACM. Concerns over the risks associated with advances in Artificial Intelligence have prompted calls for greater efforts toward robust and beneficial AI, including machine ethics. Recently, roboticists have responded by initiating the developm... Read More about The Dark Side of Ethical Robots.

Mapping Intelligence: Requirements and Possibilities (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018. New types of artificial intelligence (AI), from cognitive assistants to social robots, are challenging meaningful comparison with other kinds of intelligence. How can such intelligent systems be catalogued, eval... Read More about Mapping Intelligence: Requirements and Possibilities.

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.

Combining opinion pooling and evidential updating for multi-agent consensus (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The evidence available to a multi-agent system can take at least two distinct forms. There can be direct evidence from the environment resulting, for example, from sensor measurements or from running tests or experiments. In addition, agents also gai... Read More about Combining opinion pooling and evidential updating for multi-agent consensus.

Feature and performance comparison of the V-REP, Gazebo and ARGoS robot simulators (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. In this paper, the characteristics and performance of three open-source simulators for robotics, V-REP, Gazebo and ARGoS, are thoroughly analysed and compared. While they all allow... Read More about Feature and performance comparison of the V-REP, Gazebo and ARGoS robot simulators.

Negative updating combined with opinion pooling in the best-of-n problem in swarm robotics (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© 2018, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. There is a need for effective collective decision making in decentralised multi-agent and robotic systems. This paper introduces a novel approach to the best-of-n decision problem with large n. It utilises nega... Read More about Negative updating combined with opinion pooling in the best-of-n problem in swarm robotics.

euRathlon 2015: A multi-domain multi-robot grand challenge for search and rescue robots (2016)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Staged at Piombino, Italy in September 2015, euRathlon 2015 was the world’s first multi-domain (air, land and sea) multi-robot search and rescue competition. In a mock-disaster scenario inspired b... Read More about euRathlon 2015: A multi-domain multi-robot grand challenge for search and rescue robots.

Rational imitation for robots (2016)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Infants imitate behaviour flexibly. Depending on the circumstances, they copy both actions and their effects or only reproduce the demonstrator’s intended goals. In view of this selective imitatio... Read More about Rational imitation for robots.

Towards verifiably ethical robot behaviour (2015)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Ensuring that autonomous systems work ethically is both complex and difficult. However, the idea of having an additional ‘governor’ that assesses options the system has, and prunes them to select the most ethical choices is well understood. Recent wo... Read More about Towards verifiably ethical robot behaviour.