UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Resilience
Lead Research Organisation:
University of York
Department Name: Computer Science
Abstract
Imagine a future where autonomous systems are widely available to improve our lives. In this future, autonomous robots unobtrusively maintain the infrastructure of our cities, and support people in living fulfilled independent lives. In this future, autonomous software reliably diagnoses disease at early stages, and dependably manages our road traffic to maximise flow and minimise environmental impact.
Before this vision becomes reality, several major limitations of current autonomous systems need to be addressed. Key among these limitations is their reduced resilience: today's autonomous systems cannot avoid, withstand, recover from, adapt, and evolve to handle the uncertainty, change, faults, failure, adversity, and other disruptions present in such applications.
Recent and forthcoming technological advances will provide autonomous systems with many of the sensors, actuators and other functional building blocks required to achieve the desired resilience levels, but this is not enough. To be resilient and trustworthy in these important applications, future autonomous systems will also need to use these building blocks effectively, so that they achieve complex technical requirements without violating our social, legal, ethical, empathy and cultural (SLEEC) rules and norms. Additionally, they will need to provide us with compelling evidence that the decisions and actions supporting their resilience satisfy both technical and SLEEC-compliance goals.
To address these challenging needs, our project will develop a comprehensive toolbox of mathematically based notations and models, SLEEC-compliant resilience-enhancing methods, and systematic approaches for developing, deploying, optimising, and assuring highly resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. To this end, we will capture the multidisciplinary nature of the social and technical aspects of the environment in which autonomous systems operate - and of the systems themselves - via mathematical models. For that, we have a team of Computer Scientists, Engineers, Psychologists, Philosophers, Lawyers, and Mathematicians, with an extensive track record of delivering research in all areas of the project. Working with such a mathematical model, autonomous systems will determine which resilience- enhancing actions are feasible, meet technical requirements, and are compliant with the relevant SLEEC rules and norms. Like humans, our autonomous systems will be able to reduce uncertainty, and to predict, detect and respond to change, faults, failures and adversity, proactively and efficiently. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will share knowledge and services with humans and other autonomous agents. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will cooperate with one another and with humans, and will proactively seek assistance from experts.
Our work will deliver a step change in developing resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. Developers will have notations and guidance to specify the socio-technical norms and rules applicable to the operational context of their autonomous systems, and techniques to design resilient autonomous systems that are trustworthy and compliant with these norms and rules. Additionally, developers will have guidance to build autonomous systems that can tolerate disruption, making the system usable in a larger set of circumstances. Finally, they will have techniques to develop resilient autonomous systems that can share information and services with peer systems and humans, and methods for providing evidence of the resilience of their systems. In such a context, autonomous systems and systems of systems will be highly resilient and trustworthy.
Before this vision becomes reality, several major limitations of current autonomous systems need to be addressed. Key among these limitations is their reduced resilience: today's autonomous systems cannot avoid, withstand, recover from, adapt, and evolve to handle the uncertainty, change, faults, failure, adversity, and other disruptions present in such applications.
Recent and forthcoming technological advances will provide autonomous systems with many of the sensors, actuators and other functional building blocks required to achieve the desired resilience levels, but this is not enough. To be resilient and trustworthy in these important applications, future autonomous systems will also need to use these building blocks effectively, so that they achieve complex technical requirements without violating our social, legal, ethical, empathy and cultural (SLEEC) rules and norms. Additionally, they will need to provide us with compelling evidence that the decisions and actions supporting their resilience satisfy both technical and SLEEC-compliance goals.
To address these challenging needs, our project will develop a comprehensive toolbox of mathematically based notations and models, SLEEC-compliant resilience-enhancing methods, and systematic approaches for developing, deploying, optimising, and assuring highly resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. To this end, we will capture the multidisciplinary nature of the social and technical aspects of the environment in which autonomous systems operate - and of the systems themselves - via mathematical models. For that, we have a team of Computer Scientists, Engineers, Psychologists, Philosophers, Lawyers, and Mathematicians, with an extensive track record of delivering research in all areas of the project. Working with such a mathematical model, autonomous systems will determine which resilience- enhancing actions are feasible, meet technical requirements, and are compliant with the relevant SLEEC rules and norms. Like humans, our autonomous systems will be able to reduce uncertainty, and to predict, detect and respond to change, faults, failures and adversity, proactively and efficiently. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will share knowledge and services with humans and other autonomous agents. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will cooperate with one another and with humans, and will proactively seek assistance from experts.
Our work will deliver a step change in developing resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. Developers will have notations and guidance to specify the socio-technical norms and rules applicable to the operational context of their autonomous systems, and techniques to design resilient autonomous systems that are trustworthy and compliant with these norms and rules. Additionally, developers will have guidance to build autonomous systems that can tolerate disruption, making the system usable in a larger set of circumstances. Finally, they will have techniques to develop resilient autonomous systems that can share information and services with peer systems and humans, and methods for providing evidence of the resilience of their systems. In such a context, autonomous systems and systems of systems will be highly resilient and trustworthy.
Organisations
- University of York (Lead Research Organisation)
- Technical University of Munich (Collaboration)
- Thales Group (Collaboration)
- University of York (Collaboration)
- University of Lincoln (Collaboration)
- DURHAM UNIVERSITY (Collaboration)
- UFPE (Collaboration)
- Heriot-Watt University (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON (Collaboration)
- University of Bremen (Collaboration)
- Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) (Collaboration)
- Boeing (Collaboration)
- University of Toronto (Collaboration)
- University of L'Aquila (Collaboration)
- KING'S COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
- Federal University of Pernambuco (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER (Collaboration)
- YORK TEACHING HOSPITAL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (Collaboration)
- Polytechnic University of Milan (Collaboration)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (Collaboration)
- University College London (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM (Collaboration)
- Galois, Inc. (Collaboration)
- Rowan University (Collaboration)
- University of Maryland, College Park (Collaboration)
- Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Fdn Trust (Project Partner)
- Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust (Project Partner)
- TechnipFMC (International) (Project Partner)
- Chartered Inst of Ergo & Human Factors (Project Partner)
- Autonomous Drivers Alliance (Project Partner)
- ATACC group (Project Partner)
- CLAWAR Ltd (Project Partner)
- RAC Foundation for Motoring (Project Partner)
- CRODA EUROPE LIMITED (Project Partner)
- PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND (Project Partner)
- KUKA Robotics UK Limited (Project Partner)
- Resilient Cyber Security Solutions (Project Partner)
- Milton Keynes Uni Hospital NHS Fdn Trust (Project Partner)
- Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (Project Partner)
- GoSouthCoast (Project Partner)
- Defence Science & Tech Lab DSTL (Project Partner)
- Ocado Technology (Project Partner)
- ClearSy (Project Partner)
- Cyberselves Universal Limited (Project Partner)
- National Institute of Informatics (Project Partner)
- Bradford Teaching Hospitals (Project Partner)
- University of Central Florida (Project Partner)
- ADVANCED MANUFACTURING RESEARCH CENTRE (Project Partner)
- Robert Bosch GmbH (Project Partner)
- Connected Places Catapult (Project Partner)
- The Shadow Robot Company (Project Partner)
- University of Western Australia (Project Partner)
- Consequential Robotics (to be replaced) (Project Partner)
- THALES UK LIMITED (Project Partner)
- Kompai Robotics (Project Partner)
- Lero (The Irish Software Research Ctr) (Project Partner)
- NHS Digital (previously HSCIC) (Project Partner)
- Sheffield Childrens NHS Foundation Trust (Project Partner)
- Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) (Project Partner)
- IAM RoadSmart (Project Partner)
Publications
Abeywickrama D
(2023)
On Specifying for Trustworthiness
in Communications of the ACM
Abeywickrama D
(2022)
On Specifying for Trustworthiness
Aftab H
(2021)
Classification of Failures in the Perception of Conversational Agents (CAs) and Their Implications on Patient Safety.
in Studies in health technology and informatics
Akiki P
(2025)
Resources don't grow on trees: A framework for resource-driven adaptation
in Journal of Systems and Software
Al-Nuaimi M
(2021)
Hybrid Verification Technique for Decision-Making of Self-Driving Vehicles
in Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks
| Description | The Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Resilience was set up with the ambitious aim to deliver mathematically based notations, models, methods and systematic approaches for developing autonomous systems capable of handling the disruptions and uncertainty encountered in real-world applications. The Node has focused on sociotechnical resilience, which involves ensuring that autonomous systems achieve their complex technical goals resiliently and without violating our social, legal, ethical, empathy and cultural (SLEEC) rules and norms. The Node has already delivered significant research aligned with its aim, including the key results summarised below. - We devised a process for deriving SLEEC rules for autonomous systems from a set of high-level social, legal, ethical, empathetic and cultural norms, thereby bridging the gap between normative principles and operational practice. - We defined a controlled, domain-specific language for expressing SLEEC rules, and we developed methods and tools for translating these rules into a mathematically based notation, for checking their consistency (to identify conflicting and redundant rules), and for verifying whether a resilient autonomous system complies with a given set of rules. - We devised methods for determining the hazards that may lead to disruptions and uncertainties in the operation of an autonomous system, and the actions that can enable the system to mitigate these hazards resiliently. - We developed methods for predicting disruptions that may affect an autonomous system before they happen, to enable the system to adjust its behaviour in order to avoid them, and for detecting sudden changes and failures in order to respond to them. - We delivered techniques enabling autonomous systems to achieve optimal trade-offs between conflicting objectives they need to optimise (e.g., utility, cost, risk) as they adapt in order to achieve their goals in the presence of uncertainty and disruptions. |
| Exploitation Route | We co-developed the project research with partners who represent all types of autonomous system stakeholders, including solution developers, end-user organisations, robot manufacturers, research organisations, operators, policy makers, and standards organisations. These committed partners are spearheading the adoption of the project results. Additionally, we organised the 2022 UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Health and Social Care Workshop (https://resilience.tas.ac.uk/events/HSCW), where our research was shared with a wide range of resilient autonomous systems stakeholders, including NHS Trust hospitals, social care organisations, and special educational needs school teachers. We have co-organised leading conferences (including the 19th International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, the 40th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security, the 20th IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture, and the 18th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems) and international seminars (including the 2023 Bertinoro Meeting on Uncertainty in Self-Adaptive Systems) where our research contributed to defining the scope, theme and topics of the event, and therefore influenced international research agendas and roadmaps. We have contributed project results to international standards under development, including the IEEE Guide on Verification of Autonomous Systems, and ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939 Systems and Software Engineering Dependability. |
| Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Healthcare Transport Other |
| URL | https://resilience.tas.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Our Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Resilience set out to pursue a programme of research aimed at delivering a step change in the resilience of autonomous systems and of the sociotechnical processes supported by these systems. To achieve this ambitious objective, we have delivered multidisciplinary research that advances the science of developing highly resilient autonomous systems (impact on knowledge). Detailed in the other sections of this report, and co-created with project partners through a 'systems thinking' approach, this research is presented in over 70 research publications, and through contributions to international standards and research agendas. Additionally, we made significant contributions to building a trustworthy autonomous systems research community in the UK and internationally through activities that include the organisation of stakeholder workshops and research conferences, and through a biweekly online seminar series on 'Sociotechnical Resilience of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems'. The seminar series included presentations by leading researchers from across the world, alongside talks in which postdoctoral researchers from our Node presented research outputs from the project. Video recordings of these seminars are available on our project's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@ukritasresiliencenode89/videos) and have been watched over 1500 times to date, and over 170 stakeholders have registered to receive notifications about forthcoming seminars. We are a diverse, multidisciplinary and gender-balanced research team (currently comprising 54% women and 46% men) with a track record of training a successful team of early-career researchers. To date, four of our postdoctoral researchers have been offered open-ended academic and research positions in project-related areas at UK universities and the Alan Turing Institute (impact on people). |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Other |
| Impact Types | Societal Economic |
| Description | Advice on best practice in AI/Software for the Software and AI as a Medical Device Change Programme - Roadmap |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | Plan to support the update of the international standard IEC 62304. |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/software-and-ai-as-a-medical-device-change-programme/soft... |
| Description | CONSORT-AI Guidelines |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Guideline Title | CONSORT-AI Guidelines |
| Description | CONSORT-AI Guidelines: took part in a study that generated a new reporting guideline for clinical trials evaluating interventions with an AI component |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in clinical guidelines |
| Impact | improved transparency and completeness of reporting of clinical trials that aim to evaluate interventions involving artificial intelligence |
| URL | https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3164 |
| Description | Co-drafted a Data Transfer Agreement Template for South Africa |
| Geographic Reach | Africa |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| Impact | This pro-forma template, POPIA compliant, can be used by the scientific community for the lawful transfer of data beyond South African borders. |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/records/7537396 |
| Description | Contributions to IEEE Guide on Verification of Autonomous Systems |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or Improved professional practice |
| URL | https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/2817/7644/ |
| Description | Executive Summary |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | First Response Practice |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | IEEE Roadmap on Verification of Autonomous Systems |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Description | Input to Office for AI (work on AI safety) |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Description | NATO Meaningful Human Control in AI Enabled Systems |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Safety and ethics of autonomous systems in the health and care sector (Royal Academy of Engineering and the National Engineering Policy Centre) |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | UKRI Roundtable on Public Engagement with Automation and Autonomous Systems |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | WHO Regulatory considerations on artificial intelligence for health. |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | This is a report/guidance by the World Health Organisation so has far-reaching impact on global health policy development |
| URL | https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240078871 |
| Description | Working Group on Health software and health IT systems safety, effectiveness and security, with responsibility for producing guidance for the use of assurance cases for safety and security. |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Description | Workshop with social care managers |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | The social care has been engaged in educational activities about using advanced computational and physical assistance to carers in providing social and physical care to people with physical and cognitive disabilities. |
| Description | provision of autonomous system assurance training to members of The Technical Cooperation Program |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Ambient Assisted Living for Long-term Monitoring and Interaction |
| Amount | £249,992 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lloyd's Register Foundation |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2021 |
| End | 11/2022 |
| Description | Assuring Responsibility for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems |
| Amount | £703,615 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/W011239/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2022 |
| End | 06/2024 |
| Description | Catalysis for Circular economy and sustainable manufacturing theme |
| Amount | £140,364 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Research Complex at Harwell |
| Department | UK Catalysis Hub |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 10/2022 |
| Description | Confident safety integration for Cobots (CSI: Cobot) - Part 2 |
| Amount | £169,897 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lloyd's Register Foundation |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 06/2022 |
| Description | Confident safety integration for Cobots (CSI: Cobot) - Part 2 |
| Amount | £169,897 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lloyd's Register Foundation |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2021 |
| End | 06/2022 |
| Description | Digital twinning for safety assurance and knowledge exchange in industrial robotics - Phases 1 & 2 |
| Amount | £61,786 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Sheffield |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2022 |
| End | 06/2023 |
| Description | Digital twins for high-value engineering applications - DTHIVE |
| Amount | £898,048 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Alan Turing Institute |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | Evaluating the safety and patient impact of an Artificial Intelligence Command Centre in the UK National Health Service |
| Amount | £456,613 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NIHR129483 |
| Organisation | National Institute for Health Research |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 08/2022 |
| Description | Global Research and Innovation Programme |
| Amount | £30,500 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V026747/1 additional GRIP funding |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | Human-Robot Collaboration in RoboStar |
| Amount | £150,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Thales Group |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | France |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 09/2025 |
| Description | Imagining Robotic Care |
| Amount | £148,246 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Southampton |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | MediTel |
| Amount | £400,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Ministry of Defence (MOD) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2022 |
| End | 06/2023 |
| Description | Protecting environments with unmanned aerial vehicle swarms |
| Amount | £7,800,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Windracers |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2022 |
| End | 07/2024 |
| Description | Regional Engagement Awards |
| Amount | £75,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | REA1920\3\20 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 12/2023 |
| Description | Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Disabled Young People |
| Amount | £150,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Southampton |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2022 |
| End | 03/2023 |
| Description | Responsible AI UK International Partnership |
| Amount | £121,587 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | Responsible AI IP018 Grant Ref: EP/Y009800/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2024 |
| End | 06/2025 |
| Description | Robotic Safe Adaptation In unprecedented Situations |
| Amount | € 6,883,233 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | Grant agreement ID: 101133807 |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 01/2024 |
| End | 12/2027 |
| Description | The Centre for Assuring Autonomy |
| Amount | £4,000,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lloyd's Register Foundation |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2024 |
| End | 12/2028 |
| Description | The South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub |
| Amount | £3,211,469 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/X03075X/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2023 |
| End | 08/2026 |
| Description | UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Lifelong Safety Assurance of AI-enabled Autonomous Systems (SAINTS) |
| Amount | £8,050,129 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2024 |
| End | 09/2032 |
| Description | University of York - EPSRC capital award for core equipment 2022/23 |
| Amount | £875,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/X034798/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2022 |
| End | 11/2022 |
| Title | Social engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders |
| Description | A method for eliciting user requirements and engaging in understanding of stakeholder needs and potential implementations of the technology developed in the REASON project. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | A method for eliciting user requirements and engaging in understanding of stakeholder needs and potential implementations of the technology developed in the REASON project. |
| Title | Dataset for Paper "Digital twin based testing for cyber-physical systems: A systematic literature review" |
| Description | An excel spreadsheet containing exported metadata collected during a systematic literature review on digital twin based testing for cyber-physical systems. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://figshare.shef.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Dataset_for_Paper_Digital_twin_based_testing_for_cyber-... |
| Title | Dataset for Paper "Digital twin based testing for cyber-physical systems: A systematic literature review" |
| Description | An excel spreadsheet containing exported metadata collected during a systematic literature review on digital twin based testing for cyber-physical systems. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://figshare.shef.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Dataset_for_Paper_Digital_twin_based_testing_for_cyber-... |
| Title | Human-Human Dressing Assistive Trials |
| Description | In December, 2021, we carried out a Human-Human assistive dressing trials to collect data that we need to train our robotic dressing assistive system. The study involved experienced occupational therapists (OTs) from North Yorkshire County Council and 7 healthy volunteers. We gathered data from assistive daily living tasks that reflects the process taken in Care Homes, in particular dressing scenarios. Study Objectives: • To evaluate the interaction, attention, and information gathered from information provided in human interaction to carry out dressing tasks. • To evaluate and report on a safety study with older adult users interacting with a human for an ADL Task. • To identify the hazards and implications that need to be considered for a more holistic approach for designing of safe physical Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) between the user and the robots in different scenarios. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This study aims at understanding occupational therapists' dressing strategies of people with different types of physical impairments, forces and trajectories involved in the strategies and interaction modalities such as speech that help maintain safe interaction. This will help develop control algorithms and provide methods for establishing safe operations in robot-assisted dressing. |
| Description | AGILE Project: Chatty Car |
| Organisation | University of Nottingham |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Support project proposal and funding for postdoc position at 0.2FTE. Collaborate with partners to support the design of a future natural language interface |
| Collaborator Contribution | Use existing datasets supported by relevant theory and apply multi-disciplinary methods to the design of a natural language interface, encompassing both lexical and non-lexical mediators of trust, and curating findings in a preliminary design framework. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other University partners |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Agile Project: Trustworthy Human-Swarm Partnerships in Extreme Environments |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Post Doc 0.2FTE for 8 months on the project Generate operator centric requirements for the design of a trust-worthy human-swarm interaction. This was achieved by conducting interviews with current drone operators. The outputs of this feed into interface design and user testing. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Provide network contacts for participant recruitment for the interview study. Conduct workshops and develop use cases and a scenario for user testing study. |
| Impact | One journal publication has been submitted and is under peer review. Two conference paper have been accepted but DOIs are not yet available. Collaboration partnerships have been formed with other departments at the University of Southampton and with industry. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Agile Project: Trustworthy Human-Swarm Partnerships in Extreme Environments |
| Organisation | Thales Group |
| Country | France |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Post Doc 0.2FTE for 8 months on the project Generate operator centric requirements for the design of a trust-worthy human-swarm interaction. This was achieved by conducting interviews with current drone operators. The outputs of this feed into interface design and user testing. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Provide network contacts for participant recruitment for the interview study. Conduct workshops and develop use cases and a scenario for user testing study. |
| Impact | One journal publication has been submitted and is under peer review. Two conference paper have been accepted but DOIs are not yet available. Collaboration partnerships have been formed with other departments at the University of Southampton and with industry. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Agile Project: Trustworthy Human-Swarm Partnerships in Extreme Environments |
| Organisation | University of Nottingham |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Post Doc 0.2FTE for 8 months on the project Generate operator centric requirements for the design of a trust-worthy human-swarm interaction. This was achieved by conducting interviews with current drone operators. The outputs of this feed into interface design and user testing. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Provide network contacts for participant recruitment for the interview study. Conduct workshops and develop use cases and a scenario for user testing study. |
| Impact | One journal publication has been submitted and is under peer review. Two conference paper have been accepted but DOIs are not yet available. Collaboration partnerships have been formed with other departments at the University of Southampton and with industry. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Boeing Research & TEchnology |
| Organisation | Boeing |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Basic research and expertise on the verification of autonomous agents with deep-learning components. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Use case and expertise on autonomous agents from the avionics domain (airport taxiing). |
| Impact | Research paper under review. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | CSP-based testing |
| Organisation | University of Bremen |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in CSP and its semantics |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on testing and automation |
| Impact | J. Peleska, W. l. Huang, and A. L. C. Cavalcanti. Finite complete suites for CSP refinement testing. Science of Computer Programming, 179:1 -- 23, 2019. A. L. C. Cavalcanti, W.-L. Huang, J. Peleska, and J. C. P. Woodcock. CSP and Kripke Structures. In M. Leucker, C. Rueda, and F. D. Valencia, editors, Theoretical Aspects of Computing, pages 505--523. Springer, 2015. |
| Start Year | 2015 |
| Description | Circus foundations and Isabelle/UTP |
| Organisation | Galois, Inc. |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | This is a collaboration that has just started. We are going to provide expertise on the techniques. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They are taking a lead to mechanise the techniques and apply them on Rigorous Digital Engineering. |
| Impact | Development of theories and techniques, and their application to industrial case studies. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Collaboration on RoboSim language: semantics, verification, examples, tools. |
| Organisation | Federal University of Pernambuco |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Training on robotics |
| Collaborator Contribution | Partnership in the design and implementation of RoboSim |
| Impact | Joint papers. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Collaboration on RoboWorld language: syntax, semantics, examples, tools |
| Organisation | UFPE |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on robotics, the RoboChart language, and CyPhyCircus semantics |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on controlled natural languages, partnership in the design and implementation of RoboWorld |
| Impact | Development of the RoboWorld language and a prototype tool for it, journal paper under review |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Collaboration on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural (SLEEC) aspects of autonomous agents with the TAS Resilience Node |
| Organisation | University of York |
| Department | Department of Computer Science |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on the formal semantics of RoboChart and definition of conformance relation for checking satisfaction of design models against SLEEC rules. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural (SLEEC) aspects for Autonomous Agents. |
| Impact | Joint work under way and contributing to the writing of joint journal paper. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Collaboration on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic, and Cultural Requirements for Service Robots |
| Organisation | University of Toronto |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on modelling, formalisation, validation, and verification of these requirements. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Alternative mathematical models, and validation approaches. |
| Impact | We have published two papers together and given a tutorial. |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | Collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Philosophy |
| Organisation | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration with Professor John Horty and Dr Ilaria Canavotto of the Values Centred AI Initiative at the University of Maryland, College Park. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Proposal of a new casuistry (case by case) reasoning model for the extraction of structured moral knowledge. |
| Impact | Workshop on Defeasible Reasoning in Ethics and AI, University of York, November 13-14 2023 |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Grant Collarobation |
| Organisation | University of Sheffield |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Consulting-Mentoring role in Grant & Research Development |
| Collaborator Contribution | Grant Submission |
| Impact | Grant Submission Multi-disciplinary work: sociology, psychology, software engineering |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Hybrid Model Checking - CORA |
| Organisation | Technical University of Munich |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We bring expertise in robotics, the design and semantics of the RoboWorld language, and the CyPhyCircus hybrid process algebra. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They bring expertise in hybrid model checking, and development on the CORA hybrid model checker to support our models. |
| Impact | Models in CORA based on the semantics of RoboWorld, testing and enhancement of the CORA hybrid model checker. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | NASA Ames |
| Organisation | National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) |
| Department | NASA Ames Exploration Center |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Basic research on quantifying the uncertainty of deep-learning perception components for autonomous systems. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Use cases, data sets, machine learning models, deep-learning expertise. |
| Impact | Basic research described in two papers currently under review. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Out of distribution classification methods |
| Organisation | University of York |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration for trustworthy and safe human-robot interactions and development of resilient machine learning methods |
| Collaborator Contribution | We have been working jointly on specific scientific topics and achieved interesting results. |
| Impact | A deep learning-enhanced Digital Twin framework for improving safety and reliability in human-robot collaborative manufacturing S Wang, J Zhang, P Wang, J Law, R Calinescu, L Mihaylova Robotics and computer-integrated manufacturing 85, 102608, 2024 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736584523000832 Out-of-distribution Object Detection through Bayesian Uncertainty Estimation T Zhang, S Wang, N Bouaynaya, R Calinescu, L Mihaylova Proceedings of the 2023 26th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), pp. 1-8, 2023 |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Pump Priming - SAVE: Stuational Awareness (SA) and trust during shift between autonomy levels in automated vehicles |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Support project proposal. Provide Human Factors support within the project to facilitate the user study and the data collection |
| Collaborator Contribution | Develop and implement driving scenarios involving automated vehicles. Identify the role of feedback (type) & guidance of the driving assistive technology in increasing SA & trust. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other universities. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Collaboration on IDEA |
| Organisation | Polytechnic University of Milan |
| Country | Italy |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Identity-aware prototype research |
| Collaborator Contribution | Formal Verification |
| Impact | Multi-disciplinary collaboration on identity-aware prototype and relevant publications. |
| Start Year | 2024 |
| Description | Rowan University |
| Organisation | Rowan University |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in verification of neural networks, basic research. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in Bayesian techniques for deep learning, basic research. |
| Impact | Ongoing work on joint grant proposals. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Royal Academy of Engineering Industry Fellowship |
| Organisation | Thales Group |
| Department | Thales UK Limited |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Co-supervision of student and industry fellows. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We are developing a technique to model and verify mobile and autonomous robots with humans in the loop. |
| Impact | Multi-disciplinary: Engineering and Psychology. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Sound simulation of robotic applications |
| Organisation | Federal University of Pernambuco |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have brought to them expertise on the results and approaches to modelling and verifying robotic applications, and developing simulations. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They have brought in experience in model-based software engineering, compositional verification, testing, and probabilistic model checking. They have employed a research assistant to to work on the project and collaborate with our group. Together, we are developing a domain-specific language for modelling simulations. The language has a formal semantics under development. They are in charge of developing tool support for this language, and developing tool support for probabilistic reasoning. |
| Impact | Tools are under development and papers are submitted. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | TAS AGILE: Digital Twins for Human-Assistive Robot Teams |
| Organisation | Heriot-Watt University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Contribute to the Validation and Verification of a Digital Twin for the Robot-Assisted Dressing (RAD) application. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Create the Digitial Twin and demonstrate its use. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS AGILE: Digital Twins for Human-Assistive Robot Teams |
| Organisation | University of Nottingham |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Contribute to the Validation and Verification of a Digital Twin for the Robot-Assisted Dressing (RAD) application. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Create the Digitial Twin and demonstrate its use. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Preserving Marine Life in a Shipping World: AI to the Rescue (PREVAIL) |
| Organisation | Thales Group |
| Country | France |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Co-design an AI advisory tool to ensure trustworthy decisions. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collect and process data using Deep Neural Network. |
| Impact | Maximise the use of resources available in TAS community. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Preserving Marine Life in a Shipping World: AI to the Rescue (PREVAIL) |
| Organisation | University of Manchester |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Co-design an AI advisory tool to ensure trustworthy decisions. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collect and process data using Deep Neural Network. |
| Impact | Maximise the use of resources available in TAS community. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Verifiably Human-Centric Robot Assisted Dressing |
| Organisation | Durham University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Create an abstract model of the application for verification using formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Design and conduct experiments. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Verifiably Human-Centric Robot Assisted Dressing |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Create an abstract model of the application for verification using formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Design and conduct experiments. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Verifiably Human-Centric Robot Assisted Dressing |
| Organisation | University of Lincoln |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Create an abstract model of the application for verification using formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Design and conduct experiments. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Verifiably Human-Centric Robot Assisted Dressing |
| Organisation | University of Manchester |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Create an abstract model of the application for verification using formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Design and conduct experiments. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Verifiably Human-Centric Robot Assisted Dressing |
| Organisation | University of Sheffield |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Create an abstract model of the application for verification using formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Design and conduct experiments. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | TAS Integrator: Verifiably Human-Centric Robot Assisted Dressing |
| Organisation | University of Southampton |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Create an abstract model of the application for verification using formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Design and conduct experiments. |
| Impact | Collaborative partnerships with other Universities |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | University of L'Aquila, Italy |
| Organisation | University of L'Aquila |
| Country | Italy |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Joint research on social, legal, ethical, empathetic and cultural requirements for autonomous systems. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Joint research on social, legal, ethical, empathetic and cultural requirements for autonomous systems. |
| Impact | N/A |
| Start Year | 2024 |
| Description | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Organisation | University of Toronto |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Contributions to joint research papers, and to joint research grant application. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contributions to joint research papers, and to joint research grant application. |
| Impact | Research papers at top conferences Automated Software Engineering 2023, and International Conference on Software Engineering 2024. Funded Responsible AI International Partnership. |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation |
| Organisation | York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Autonomous systems, robotics and AI expertise. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Use case, data, emergency medicine expertise, consultant time. |
| Impact | Research papers under review, partnership on grant proposals under review. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Title | LINKING SOURCE CODE WITH COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS |
| Description | Concepts for linking source code with compliance requirements are presented. One example comprises analyzing a set of compliance requirements to identify one or more compliance topics. The example further comprises determining keywords for the identified one or more compliance topics. An item of source code is then analyzed to identify occurrences of the keywords in the source code. Mapping information representing a relationship between the item of source code and the compliance requirements is then generated based on the identified occurrence of the keywords. |
| IP Reference | US2020117573 |
| Protection | Patent granted |
| Year Protection Granted | 2020 |
| Licensed | No |
| Impact | N/A (yet) |
| Title | RELEVANCE OF A SOURCE CODE CHANGE TO COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS |
| Description | Concepts for identifying relevance of a source code change to compliance requirements are presented. One example comprises obtaining mapping information linking an item of source code with a set of compliance requirements, the mapping information representing a relationship between the item of source and the set of compliance requirements. A changed element of an item of source code is identified. The mapping information is analyzed based on the changed element to determine if the changed element relates to a compliance requirement. If it is determined that the changed element relates to a compliance requirement, an indication of th compliance requirement is generated. |
| IP Reference | US2020117427 |
| Protection | Patent granted |
| Year Protection Granted | 2020 |
| Licensed | No |
| Impact | N/A |
| Title | MediTel system |
| Description | A physical prototype and software for providing diagnostics for wounded soldiers on battlefields. |
| Type Of Technology | Physical Model/Kit |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | A physical prototype was built and tested at DSTL laboratories.The prototype is teleoperated and manipulates different sub-systems to test health parameters of the wounded person. |
| Title | SLEECVAL: Specification and Validation of Normative Rules for Autonomous Agents |
| Description | Growing range of applications use autonomous agents such as AI and robotic systems to perform tasks deemed dangerous, tedious or costly for humans. To truly succeed with these tasks, the autonomous agents must perform them without violating the social, legal, ethical, empathetic, and cultural (SLEEC) norms of their users and operators. We introduce SLEECVAL, a tool for specification and validation of rules that reflect these SLEEC norms. Our tool supports the specification of SLEEC rules in a DSL. we co-defined with the help of ethicists, lawyers and stakeholders from health and social care, and uses the CSP refinement checker FDR4 to identify redundant and conflicting rules in a SLEEC specification. We illustrate the use of SLEECVAL for two case studies: an assistive dressing robot, and a firefighting drone. |
| Type Of Technology | New/Improved Technique/Technology |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | SLEECVAL enables specification and validation of non-functional rules with the focus on SLEEC (social, legal, ethical, empathetic, and cultural) principles for autonomous agents. To best of our knowledge, our language and tool are novel in their support to formalise and validate normative rules that address SLEEC concerns. Our vision is to provide an automated framework to specify, validate, and verify that agents follow rules, reporting redundancy and conflicts. |
| URL | https://sleec.github.io |
| Title | Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural toolkit (SLEEC TK) for requirements specification, validation and verification |
| Description | SLEEC-TK is an Eclipse-based environment for defining SLEEC rules in a domain-specific language with a timed process algebraic semantics. SLEEC-TK uses model checking to identify redundant and conflicting rules, and to verify conformance of autonomous agent design models with SLEEC rules. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Publication of a tool paper nominated for an award at ETAPS 2023 (https://etaps.org/2023/). Delivery of a tutorial at ASE 2023 (https://conf.researchr.org/track/ase-2023/ase-2023-tutorials?). |
| Title | xinwei2124/fPMC_ICSE: Fast Parametric Model Checking (fPMC) ICSE 2021 |
| Description | No description provided. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This software eased adoption of our new algorithm that can be used to signficiantly extend applicability of parametric model checking. |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/4522170 |
| Description | 18th International Summer School on Trustworthy Software |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti and Jim Woodcock led courses on Software Engineering for Robotics and Isabelle/HOL as part of the 18th International Summer School on Trustworthy Software organised by the School of Software Engineering of East China Normal University. RoboStar colleagues James Baxter , Gustavo Carvalho , Alvaro Miyazawa , Pedro Ribeiro and Matt Windsor delivered practicals and seminars. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | A keynote speech at the International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES-23) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a key note talk on: "Machine Learning Methods for Sensor Data Fusion and Autonomous Systems". The Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES-23) provides leading edge events on various aspects of Sustainable Technology including sustainable buildings, smart energy, sustainable design and manufacturing. It has a community consisting of several thousand research scientists, academics, engineers and practitioners who participate in KES activities. My talk stimulated a discussion about autonomous systems, deep learning methods and evaluation of their resilience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | http://www.kesinternational.org/ |
| Description | A presentation at the Many Worlds of AI: intercultural approaches to AI at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, April 2023. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented at a conference entitled 'The Many Worlds of AI: intercultural approaches to AI' in collaboration with fellow-presenters on the traditional philosophy of Ubuntu and how it can be applied to AI. The aim of the conference was to interrogate how an intercultural approach to ethics can inform the processes of conceiving, designing, and regulating artificial intelligence. International delegates attended at Jesus College, the University of Cambridge, April 2023. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | http://lcfi.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/many-worlds-ai/ |
| Description | A talk on: "UKRI Uncertainty-Aware Machine Learning Methods for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A talk at the "Trusting Machines? Cross-sector Lessons from Healthcare and Security" event The event was created as part of the collaboration between RUSI, the TAS Hub and National Gallery X. The topic of the toc is summarised briefly below: Sensors provide enormous amounts of information beyond the capacity that a human could process. Being part of autonomous systems, the data are coming in real time and need to be processed quickly and fed to the control and decision-making levels. This talk will discuss recently developed machine learning methods able to deal with data challenges such as volume, velocity, veracity and variety. The recent trends in machine learning and autonomy are towards development of trustworthy solutions, able to work under different conditions - due to the external environmental changes and the dynamics of the autonomous systems. Autonomous systems need to be safe and reliable, and include both information from hard and soft sensors - cameras, LiDARs, radars, wireless sensor networks and data from the Internet or other sources. Generic principles valid for at least four domains will be discussed - for surveillance, health, manufacturing and transport systems. This talk aims to stimulate discussions from multi-disciplinary areas and consider questions like these: • How could be define different levels of trustworthiness and resilience, respectively? • How could we characterise trustworthiness? What criteria could we have? How could we quantify the impact of uncertainties and provide resilience? • What are going to be the next generations of methods for uncertainty-aware autonomous systems? • How could we fuse reliably the data from multiple heterogeneous sensors, in order to provide resilience? • How do we link the technological aspects with ethics, societal and human-centred factors? |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://rusi.cplus.live/event/trusting-machines-21 |
| Description | AI, markets, and governance: from consumers to citizens? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | This was an invited presentation to a mid-sized group of policymakers, professionals, industry, and academics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | ASE 2023 - Tutorial on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural Requirements: from Elicitation to Verification |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | On the 15 of September, colleagues Sinem Getir Yaman, Ana Cavalcanti, Radu Calinescu, and Beverly Townsend, from the UKRI TAS Node on Resilience, will be holding a tutorial on "Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural Requirements: from Elicitation to Verification" at the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2023). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Are you Talking to your Autonomous Car? (Maybe you should!) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti featured as a speaker in the latest Living with AI Podcast of the TAS Hub. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.buzzsprout.com/1447474/11041372 |
| Description | Autonomy and Safety Seminar Presentation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A presentation in which I presented a language for the encoding of rules which capture Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural Norms for use in robotic autonomous systems (RAS). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Bristol BAME STEM seminar on Software Engineering for Robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Webinar on my career journey and research interests to a wide range of scientists and Science Administrators for wider dissemination. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Collaboration and engagement with University of KwaZulu-Natal on the Regulation of AI in Africa |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Collaboration and engagement on the regulation, policy, and governance of Artificial intelligence in South Africa, and more widely in Africa. (involves 12 African jurisdictions) Included topics of whether South Africa requires an AI Act, the human rights implications of novel technologies and algorithmic systems (agents), the mapping of the AI landscape in Africa, and cross-border data flows in Africa (and data protection laws across Africa) This is an ongoing involvement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Designing Identity-Adaptive Robots: How group dynamics facilitate cooperation between human and non-human agents in emergencie |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Talk on the impact of intelligent agents on social relationships and behaviours. Audience reported increased interest in the potentials of group dynamics in socio-technical systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Discussion on the assurance of machine learning for autonomous driving |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A video presentation created for JLR on how assurance may be used for machine learnt components in autonomous driving. I also participated in a Q&A in which the participants asked questions arising from the presentation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | ECNU summer school |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | In August 2022, we delivered a series of lectures via video link to graduate students at East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai, China as part of a summer school on Trustworthy Systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://seisummerschool.github.io/2022/ |
| Description | Executive Summary |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Practical recommendations for emergency response coordination through the use of new technologies |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Expert advisor on the WHO/ITU Regulation of AI in Global Health report |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | I participated as an advisor and co-author on the WHO/ITU 'Regulation of AI in Health' report in the 'Privacy and Data Protection' and the 'Collaboration and Engagement' working groups. The report is to be published in 2022. This report is aimed at regulators worldwide. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | How to Increase Autonomy with Machine Learning Methods, a keynote talk for the 10th International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN 2023) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Abstract of the talk There is a fast development of different machine learning methods - for object classification, tracking, action recognition and other tasks with multiple types of data - from images and videos to time series data. Autonomous image and video analytics faces a number of challenges due to the huge volumes of data that sensors provide, the changeable environmental conditions and other factors. However, it is important to know when the methods work well and when they are not reliable, e.g. how much could we trust the obtained results? How could we characterise trust is a related question. How could we quantify the impact of uncertainties on the developed solutions? This talk discussed current trends in the area of machine learning and show results for image and video analytics for autonomous systems. Automated detection and behaviour analysis is another important area which necessitates unsupervised learning algorithms. Recent results for automated video analytics were presented with Dirichlet process models, deep learning and other methods. Their pros and cons were discussed. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.amity.edu/spin2023/ |
| Description | International Womens Day Talk at Thales UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Talk for International Women's Day to discuss careers in engineering and women in STEM to Thales UK. Presented work on the REASON project and discussed future interactions with autonomous systems. Discussions focused on machine learning, data inclusivity and the need for more female and diverse inclusion within STEM |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Interview for national television |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Interview for ITV |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Introducing the Project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on the REASON project (Resilience Node), and specifically the challenges and risks associated with human-drone cooperation in emergency/humanitarian operations, as well as proposed approaches to mitigate these risks. Approximately 20 individuals, including academics, software designers, & policymakers attended this meeting. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Invited Keynote at MBSE 2023 - on responsible software engineering |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Invited keynote presentation at Huawei International conference on model based software engineering, to worldwide R&D workforce. Hybrid event with estimated over 700 attendees. Including engaged worldwide Q&A session. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Invited Lecture at University of Sheffield |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | the research at a level accessible to young researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Invited Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Verifiability talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave UKRI TAS Node in Verifiability seminar on 22 April 2021, attended by members of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems network. The talk led to discussions about novel techniques for ensuring collaboration between autonomous systems as well as between autonomous systems and humans. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://verifiability.org/events/ |
| Description | Invited Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Verifiability talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Gave UKRI TAS Node in Verifiability seminar on 22 April 2021, attended by members of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems network. The talk led to discussions about novel techniques for the modelling and verification of autonomous systems, and to plans for extending these techniques to address further challenges of safety-critical autonomous systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://verifiability.org/events/ |
| Description | Invited course at the School of Software, Northwest Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This is a school organised by a consortium of Chinese universities that provides younger researchers with the background on the state of the art in the area of software engineering. The course sparked questions and discussion afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Invited course at the School of the International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This is a school associated with an international conference that provides younger researchers with the background on the state of the art in the area of theoretical aspects of computing. The course sparked questions and discussion afterwards, and led to a publication. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://ictac2021.github.io/school.html |
| Description | Invited lecture at the International School on Formal Methods and Theoretical Informatics (ETMF) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This is a school associated with an international conference that provides younger students with the background to follow the paper presentations in the conference. The course sparked questions and discussion afterwards and during the main event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/computacao.ufcg.edu.br/sbmf2021/program |
| Description | Invited talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 100 people attended the invited talk at Ben Gurion University in Israel in March 2023. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Invited talk - Specifying for Trustworthiness workshop at TAS All Hands meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk to TAS Hub Researchers on specifying (and reasoning about) Cooperation between Autonomous Systems and Humans. The talk led to discussion about integrating the difference perspective on cooperation, and the development of a follow up paper. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Invited talk at BCS on How can we define operational requirements in robotics? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On the 9th of May, Ana Cavalcanti lead a seminar on "How can we define operational requirements in robotics?" together with colleagues James Baxter and Gustavo Carvalho . The event was organised by BCS London Central Branch and BCS North London branch, for IT professionals. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Invited talk at the IROS2021 Workshop on Standardised Software Frameworks for Robotics in Nuclear |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a workshop organised by colleagues in industry. It gave us the opportunity to present our results and spark discussion with practitioners who are themselves interested in technological developments in the area. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://ukaeaevents.com/2021-ieee-rsj/ |
| Description | Invited talk at the York & North Yorkshire LEP Skills Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti delivered an invited talk at the York & North Yorkshire LEP Skills Conference on "Software Engineering for Robotics in Industry 4.0". The talk can be watched on YouTube |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.ynylep.com/news/festival-of-engagement/event/id/2220 |
| Description | Keynote at 34th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A diverse audience of over 50 researchers attended the keynote presentation, which mapped the research landscape and open challenges from the area of autonomous system resilience, thus influencing their future research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://issre.github.io/2023/program_keynotes.html |
| Description | Keynote at Context-aware, Autonomous and Smart Architecture Workshop co-located with the 16th European Conference on Software Architecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a keynote entitled "The Road to Collaboration is Paved with Goals' that explores the role of goals in supporting autonomy and collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://casaecsa.github.io/casa2022/ |
| Description | Keynote at International Conference on Formal Aspects of Component Software |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The participants at the 2021 International Conference on Formal Aspects of Component Software attended the keynote presentation, which let to discussions about the challenges of modelling, analysing and verifying the software of resilient trustworthy autonomous systems, and about approaches for addressing these challenges. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | http://facs2021.inria.fr/keynote-speakers/ |
| Description | LMS Computer Science Colloquium talk - Verification of control software for robots that learn |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On the 1st of December, Professor Ana Cavalcanti gave a talk at the LMS Computer Science Colloquium titled "Verification of control software for robots that learn", explaining the approach adopted in RoboStar to verify intelligent systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.lms.ac.uk/events/lms-computer-science-colloquium-2023 |
| Description | LSP Workshop with Stakeholders |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | 5 government and industry stakeholders participated the Lego Serious Play workshop which encouraged discussions on innovation & resilience. Participants created their own models to define resilience and created a set of SLEEC norms based on their experience. The workshop is expected to be run for a second time later this year with stakeholders from different sectors. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Living With AI Podcast: Challenges of Living with Artificial Intelligence |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Podcast produced by the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Programme on Assistive AI, and the problems of robots in a care role. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://lwaip.buzzsprout.com/1447474/8282015-who-cares-about-robots-in-the-home |
| Description | Making AI socially safe - York Ideas public lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a public lecture as part of the York Ideas series, which was simultaneously broadcast on Zoom and was attended by participants from 14 countries. The lecture sparked a lively discussion, and several participants reported that their views of the topic had been fundamentally altered. A recording will also be published on YouTube. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Not like the Others: Designing Identity-Aware Autonomous Systems for Emergencies |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of research on the integration of group psychological principles in autonomous systems and its consequencies for new challenges and innovation in psychology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/social-psychology-section |
| Description | Organisation of RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11-12 October YorRobots and RoboStar hosted an Industry Exhibition. There were talks and demonstrations by RoboStar colleagues and from YorRobots, The Institute for Safe Autonomy, Adelard, AgroIntelli, BAE, Bristol Robotics Lab, ClearSy, Chemspeed Technologies, Connected Places, LabMan, LDRA, DRis-Q, Dyson, RobotCenter, ShadowRobot, Thales and VSI. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | Panel on Considerations for ensuring the safe utilisation of AI in healthcare (with MHRA, NHS X and NHS Digital) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Panel on Considerations for ensuring the safe utilisation of AI in healthcare (with MHRA, NHS X and NHS Digital) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Poster presented in UKRI TAS Hub ECR Networking Event |
| 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 | To meet other researchers and seek collaboration opportunities across the TAS Hub |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Presentation at RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11th October 2022, I gave a talk and presented a poster on the semantics of the RoboWorld language and the use of hybrid model checking to check the semantics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | Presentation at TAS - All Hands meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of the ongoing work related to assistive dressing robots, progress made so far on building the system in terms of both hardware and software involved. Then a discussion with other members on topics related to TAS subjects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation at TAS All Hands |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of work completed on the project at the TAS All hands project to present approach to other project members |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation at TAS Hub ECR Event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I gave a presentation about the assistive dressing robots. Discussions made about different robotics applications in real life. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation at TAS-RUSI workshop : 'Trusting Machines? Cross-sector Lessons from Healthcare and Security' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | This was a presentation entitled "Assurance of machine Learning for use in Autonomous Systems" and considered the difficulties for assuring autonomous systems in open environments and a framework for the generation of an assurance case building on existing practice and desiderata associated with machine learnt components. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://rusi.org/events/conferences/trusting-machines-cross-sector-lessons-healthcare-and-security |
| Description | Presentation at the Chartered Institute for Ergonomics and Human Factors Annual Conference 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on the current work on the REASON project by the University of Southampton was given. This focused on presenting the data collected from an interviews and focus group study. The paper was presented in a section focused on Autonomous vehicles and there were other specialist members in the audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Presentation on TAS All Hands Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presented recent work in TAS All Hands Meeting and planned to seek feedback and potential collaborations. However, due to the Covid restrictions, the event was hold online, and thus the feedbacks are limited. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation to the TAS all hands meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of work to date including a process for the elicitation of SLEEC rules derived from high level principles and stakeholder knowledge. Presentation of a language to encode these rules for use in autonomous systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentations at RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11-12 October, I gave three talks on the work developed in the RoboCalc and RoboTest projects at an Industry Exhibition. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | RAS 2024 | 7th Annual IEEE UK and Ireland Robotics and Automation Society Chapter Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I chaired a session of Autonomy, Trust and verification. Also I gave a talk as part of this session, giving an overview of our research related to these topics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/sheffieldrobotics/7th-ieee-uk-ireland-ras-conference-ras-2024 |
| Description | Reflections on AI Governance in 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 2023 has been a big year for AI governance. Research Fellow, Dr Zoe Porter, explores three key reflections arising from these developments and what they can tell us about the future of safe AI. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/assuring-autonomy/news/blog/ai-governance-2023/ |
| Description | Research Talk at the TAS all hands meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of ideas on how to use game theory to develop resilient systems, based on past research on game-theoretic applications to software development, |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://vimeo.com/showcase/8775391/video/590905911 |
| Description | RoboStar test generation presented at Huawei Grenoble |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti presented an invited lecture to Huawei Grenoble on 25 October, 2023. The invitation came from the Huawei Fermat Lab, and the audience included colleagues online from China and Hong Kong. Ana presented RoboStar work on automatic test generation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Royal Academy of Engineering GEEP (Graduate Engineering Engagement Programmme) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | On the 29th of January, 2024, Ana Cavalcanti met with a group of more than 60 students in a webinar session, where they discussed the RoboStar views for Software Engineering of AI-enabled systems. GEEP is an award-winning programmme run in partnership with employers to increase the transition of engineering graduates from diverse backgrounds into engineering employment. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://raeng.org.uk/programmes-and-prizes/programmes/uk-grants-and-prizes/support-for-education/gra... |
| Description | Safe AI in Healthcare |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Talk to a multidisciplinary audience at Imperial College London (Human Factors and Design Safety Group) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Safe Use of Machine Learning in Autonomous Applications |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Talk to KI ABSICHERUNG (largest automotive consortium in Germany that investigates safe AI for automated driving, led by key industry companies including VW, BMW, Audi and BOSCH ) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Socio-technical Synergy; how Social Psychology can Help the Development of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Approximately 25 people with diverse backgrounds on computing, psychology, philosophy attended this seminar on the contributions of social psychology in reasonong for behavioural aspects of groups in autonomous systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://resilience.tas.ac.uk/events |
| Description | Talk and panel member on AI in Africa for the TUM RAIN (Responsible AI Network) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Panel member and presented on the Regulatory position of AI across Africa and the need for reform and greater collaboration |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | The socio-technical dimensions of AI: Towards a moral economy of data |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Talk to a multi-disciplinary audience on the intersection of AI with social, ethical, and cultural norms - and the need to reframe the debate away from ethical decision-making to socio-ethical-cultural responsiveness. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Towards Trustworthy Machine Learning Methods |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This is an invited talk as part of the Terrorism Risk Assessment, Modelling and Mitigation Seminar Series (TRAMMSS) at Cranfield University, 11 November 2022 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/events/events-2022/towards-trustworthy-machine-learning-methods |
| Description | Towards Trustworthy Machine Learning Methods |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This is an invited plenary talk as part of the 12th International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Networks (CECNet 2022), November 4th-7th, 2022, Online Conference, Beijing. The talk stimulated interesting discussions and possibly new research collaborations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://cecnetconf.org/Program |
| Description | UK-RAS Network RoboTalk Podcast |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Podcast organised by the UK-RAS network to describe research and projects of my group. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.ukras.org.uk/news/robot-talk-episode-thirty-out-now |
| Description | Understanding the societal consequences of human-robot collaborations for resilience |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Workshop in which the audience was asked to report what changes they would have made if they were in charge of the local resilience planning and why. They answers informed ongoing research on a Decisions from Evidence Synthesis for emergency resilience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Women in Machine Learning and Data Science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a talk entitled Machine Learning and Software Engineering: Separated by a Common Language, , which led to interesting discussions between researchers, practitioners and academics on the topic of machine learning and responsible software engineering. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | YorRobots Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | More than 100 researchers and industrialists working in the area of robotics attended a one-day exhibition involving talks, posters, and demonstrations of work carried out in the University of York and in industry around the UK. There was plenty of opportunity for discussion and engagement. I have presented the results and the vision for RoboCalc and RoboTest, and beyond. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/yorrobots/news-events/yorrobots-events/2020/exhibition-2020/ |
| Description | Youtube channel for Resilience Node Seminar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | A seminar series hosted by the team, which have hundreds of viewers internationally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkZi5sOtN4bbcTWcll_0vhg |
| Description | invited talk in the University of Bristol's Trustworthy Systems Lab Seminar series |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Around 20 members of the research lab attended the invited talk, which was followed by discussions of opportunities for future research, including in collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/research/trustworthy-systems-laboratory/seminar-series/ |
| Description | women+@DCS seminar on Software Engineering for Robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This activity supports the effort at the University of Sheffield to engage women in science. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/womendcs/ |