Robot House 2.0 - Infrastructure for the Study of Smart Home and Autonomous Robotic Systems
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Hertfordshire
Department Name: Science and Technology RI
Abstract
The goal of this proposal is to seek funding to extend the functionalities of the robotics hardware in the University of Hertfordshire's (UH) Robot House (RH), creating the Robot House 2.0 - and, importantly, to make it accessible to other research groups. The new robots to be purchased include the multipurpose and modular care-o-bot 4 which can be tailored to individual user needs and assistance scenarios. This will be complemented by less expensive, smaller platforms with more specialised functionalities: the mobile Pepper robot, Turtlebot 2 and Fetch, Sawyer robot, and the Pioneer LX and Kinova arm/manipulator. Those systems are complemented by already existing robotic hardware in the Robot House, including the telepresence Giraff robot. Having a variety of different robotic systems with differing and complementary functionalities will allow a wide range of innovative smart home and robotics research, opening up completely new scenarios and applications areas ranging from smart home and robotics technology to co-worker scenarios, that require either advanced mobility, telepresence, manipulation or communication abilities. Purchasing these new systems will allow other research groups and industry to use the RH2.0 smart home environment for development, testing and evaluation purposes. Our vision is for RH2.0 to become an easily accessible hub for UK universities and industry conducting research into smart home and robotics technology.
Planned Impact
In addition to advancing research into smart home and robotics technology, which will benefit the UK's international reputation as one of the leaders this area, there are a number of other areas with expected significant impact:
- The facility RH2.0 will enable the development and testing of smart home and robotics technology in a real-life environment with state of the art equipment. It allows industry, in particular smaller or start up companies, to utilize a facility that will ultimately lead to better products that are aimed at the home environment. Better products will benefit users of those product, which may range from older people, users who require physical and/or cognitive assistance, users of everyday products used in a home environment, to co-worker scenarios that provide assistance through human-robot collaboration.
- In addition, the facility will support the careers of young researchers who plan to carry out research into smart home and robotics technology, and who may take this further into a career in academia or industry.
- The facility will encourage engagement with the public on how to use smart home and robotics technology in our daily lives, allowing a conversation outside a traditional laboratory environment. In the RH2.0 one can evaluate systems in a real home environment which ensures that such products being developed take a user-centred approach.
The impact will be achieved through the creation of a dedicated website and brochures, via an opening event for members of academia and industry, and through open events and active engagement with members of the general public to address concerns about the use of smart home and robotics technology in our daily lives.
- The facility RH2.0 will enable the development and testing of smart home and robotics technology in a real-life environment with state of the art equipment. It allows industry, in particular smaller or start up companies, to utilize a facility that will ultimately lead to better products that are aimed at the home environment. Better products will benefit users of those product, which may range from older people, users who require physical and/or cognitive assistance, users of everyday products used in a home environment, to co-worker scenarios that provide assistance through human-robot collaboration.
- In addition, the facility will support the careers of young researchers who plan to carry out research into smart home and robotics technology, and who may take this further into a career in academia or industry.
- The facility will encourage engagement with the public on how to use smart home and robotics technology in our daily lives, allowing a conversation outside a traditional laboratory environment. In the RH2.0 one can evaluate systems in a real home environment which ensures that such products being developed take a user-centred approach.
The impact will be achieved through the creation of a dedicated website and brochures, via an opening event for members of academia and industry, and through open events and active engagement with members of the general public to address concerns about the use of smart home and robotics technology in our daily lives.
Organisations
Publications
Abadi M
(2021)
Affordable Robot Mapping using Omnidirectional Vision
Abadi M
(2021)
Robot House Human Activity Recognition Dataset
Chanseau A
(2019)
How does peoples' perception of control depend on the criticality of a task performed by a robot
in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics
Iwaya LH
(2023)
On the privacy of mental health apps: An empirical investigation and its implications for app development.
in Empirical software engineering
Koay K
(2020)
A narrative approach to human-robot interaction prototyping for companion robots
in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics
| Description | Our publications show the a number of findings, for example: * Trust towards a humanoid robot is positively affected by repeated interactions that reveal the robot's capabilities, indicating that human users trust a robot more the more awareness about it they have. * A robot's velocity profile has an effect on a human user's perception of that robot. If a robot moves with a curved acceleration profile, it can be perceived as more calm. * We identified a link between social credibility and safety-related performance that we are now investigating in greater detail. Current projects: Having upgraded the Robot House facility and installed our new robotic systems, we are in the process of preparing new funding bids. We are currently supporting two PhD students through the European Commission's Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship scheme. One project is using the Robot House to explore the factors that influence whether humans trust robots; another is looking at how robots should approach humans - in terms of their movement and behaviour - in a residential setting. Another ongoing project aims to asses how potentially conflicting safety and social behaviour requirements on a robot may be managed. Researchers are be conducting a series of experiments which examine the social acceptability of certain robot behaviours, and the effect that these have on a user's willingness to respond to the robot's safety alerts. |
| Exploitation Route | Future research on robot-human interaction will take those findings into consideration. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
| Description | We provided a secondment to researchers from Norway which allowed to verify that RH as a concept works, as we managed to share, support, and evaluate work of others which led to publication of two new papers. Since then, we have demonstrated RH to at least 10 different groups, including Hertfordshire City Council, Hertfordshire Police, Church of England St Alban's Diocese, Princess Alexandra Hospital clinicians and so on. The goal of these visits have been to highlight capabilities available to respond to social and scientific problems. These have enabled us to submit more than 30 funding applications during last two years, and have secured EMERGENCE (EP/W000741/1) that will utilise the robot house as a test bed for testing of ambient assisted technology. We are also part of the Hertfordshire Living Lab that allows for engaging with the local and national enterprises in support of technology validation and research around ambient assisted living. The RH currently support multiple PhD studies in the similar areas that provide further support for the concept validation by creating open datasets such as "the robot house human activity recognition dataset" |
| First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
| Sector | Healthcare,Other |
| Impact Types | Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | EMERGENCE: Tackling Frailty - Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service |
| Amount | £708,126 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/W000741/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2022 |
| End | 01/2025 |
| Description | SocCred: Safety and social credibility |
| Amount | £15,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lloyd's Register Foundation |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2019 |
| End | 06/2019 |
| Description | Hosting of virtual conference UKRAS21 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The annual UK-RAS Conference for PhD and Early-Career Researchers aims to promote quality research, networking, and community building for PhD students and practitioners at the frontier of science and technology in robots and intelligent systems. The conference provides a much-needed opportunity for early-career researchers to participate in a robotics conference, to publish their work through the UK-RAS Conference Proceedings, and to present their research more widely through pre-selection of the winning papers to related conferences such as TAROS. The event attracts a large and vibrant research community intent on sharing, exchanging, and exploring the latest developments and new avenues in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. The programme includes international Plenary speakers, conference and poster presentations from PhD and early-career researchers, lab tours and demos. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/news/ukras-2021/ |
| Description | ITV filming and interview |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | ITV was filming at the Robot House and interviewed Prof. Farshid Amirabdollahian on 27th August 2020. Summary: Can Robots save the NHS? ITV Tonight visited Robot House to record a programme on the impact of artificial intelligence on our NHS and social care. Dr Oscar Duke investigated how care robots could be used to help support our aging population and the demands on social care. He also did an interview with Prof Farshid Amirabdollahian who is responsible for the Robot House project since Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn left the UK and moved to University of Waterloo in Canada. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Jack to the Future: The future of Robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Patrick Holthaus was interviewed by Jack, age 8, in his fortnightly podcast Jack to the future, a podcast for children and grownups that recently won the BBC Young Audio Awards in the rising talent (ages 8-11) category. In the episode the future of robots, Jack and Patrick talk about what the Robot House is and why it is there; how people find it interacting with robots; how they are programmed and the jobs and activities that robots can do. Both discuss what the future of robots may look like and how they may fit into our daily lives in the next 30 years or so. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://anchor.fm/jacktothefuture/episodes/Episode-21--The-Future-of-Robots-e1ehpnk |
| Description | Media engagement |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The robot house has been featured multiple times in nationwide and in local news. The BBC recorded parts of the series "Holding back the years" (BBC1) inside the robot house and interviewed our principal investigator on the research conducted inside the robot house for "BBC Woman's hour" (BBC Radio 4). The robot house has been represented with great success at different university events during the last year. The fetch robot has been demonstrated live and semi-autonomously during the annual court meeting, attracted local entrepreneurs and was the elicitor for discussions around the robot house and its future usage. During the "big bang fair", Pepper dragged a lot of student attention to the robot house and our activities. The robot house is an integral part of presentation about the research of the Adaptive Systems Research Group at conferences and public events. For example, the future of the robot house has been depicted in a public talk at the "International Business Festival 2018" in Liverpool. List of news items: * Welwyn Hatfield Times article: Kaspar and the Robot House in local schools for the UK Robotics Week 2018 * BBC One series: Holding back the years inside the Robot House * BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour interview: Kerstin Dautenhahn on Robotics (from minute 18) * TEDx EastEnd: Kerstin Dautenhahn: Robots are not people - even if we want them to be |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Participation in "Take your vicar to the lab" initiative |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Robot House contributed to dialogue between science and religion. We invited members of the Church of England to visit Robot House and discussed our robotics research and how that can relate to faith. The meeting was part of a series of recurring events Take your vicar to the lab initiated by the St. Albans diocese in 2016. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/news/take-your-vicar/ |
| Description | Participation in BCS event ".helloworld@Herts Computing Fair and Fun Day" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Robot House researchers presented a booth with an interactive robot at a day-long public event organised by the BCS. During the whole event, we provided the possibility to live interact with Pepper, observe its capabilities, and gain insights about its inner workings. We also introduced the general public to Robot House research and how Pepper is used in human-robot interaction experiments. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/news/bcs-helloworld-2020/ |
| Description | Participation in BCS public engagement event ".helloworld - Hertfordshire Hackathon" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Robot House researchers presented a booth and two interactive robots at a day-long public event organised by the BCS. During the whole of the event, they provided the possibility to live interact with the robots, observe their capabilities, and gain insights about their functional principles. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/news/bcs-helloworld-2019/ |
| Description | Robot House 2.0 Opening/Introduction event 26th February 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The launch day will introduce the robot house 2.0 as a modern facility for testing and prototyping human-robot interactions in an authentic environment. Besides showcasing the infrastructure and data, graduate students will be involved in presenting their research during the event highlighting how the robot house enabled them in their doctoral project. Visitors of the launch day will explore the robot house through different exhibits in an open atmosphere that promotes discussion and knowledge exchange. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Robot House Engagement Website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public-facing website of the Robot House and its associated project, including a Twitter feed. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Robot Lab Live 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | On Wednesday, 22 June 2022 a team of Robot House researchers features in Robot Lab Live, a mass simultaneous robotics livestream event on YouTube featuring some of the UK's top robotics groups, to welcome viewers to virtually visit the house and experience how human-robot interaction research in a domestic environment can look like. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/news/robot-lab-live-2022/ |
| Description | Robot Talk Live 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Robot House manager Dr Patrick Holthaus, together with Prof. Praminda Caleb-Solly (University of Nottingham) and Mike Aldred (Dyson), joined Dr Claire Asher for Robot Talk in a special live episode about robotics in the home. Claire talks to them about how their work enables various kinds of robots inside people's homes and afterwards there is time for open questions from the live audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.ukras.org.uk/RobotTalk/episode-18-robot-talk-live/ |
| Description | UK Robotics Week 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | To celebrate UK Robotics Week 2018 at the end of June, we gave local secondary school pupils the chance to experiment first-hand with one of our robots. Robot House researchers guided A-level Computing students through how to programme the Pepper robot. Students gave Pepper customised emotions created and designed by themselves and learnt about the practical applications and challenges of programming state-of-the-art robots |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://robothouse.herts.ac.uk/roboticsweek/ |