Category: Social Robotics

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The Uncanny Social Robot

The uncanny valley effect is a famous hypothesis. Whether it can be influenced by context is still unclear. In an online experiment, Katharina Kühne and her co-authors Oliver Bendel, Yuefang Zue, and Martin Fischer found a negative linear relationship between a robot’s human likeness and its likeability and trustworthiness, and a positive linear relationship between a robot’s human likeness and its uncaniness. “Social context priming improved overall likability and trust of robots but did not modulate the Uncanny Valley effect.” (Abstract) Katharina Kühne outlined these conclusions in her presentation “Social, but Still Uncanny” – the title of the paper – at the International Conference on Social Robotics 2024 in Odense, Denmark. Like Yuefang Zue and Martin Fischer, she is a researcher at the University of Potsdam. Oliver Bendel teaches and researches at the FHNW School of Business. Together with Tamara Siegmann, he presented a second paper at the ICSR.

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Robots in Prison

On October 22, 2024, Tamara Siegmann and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW) presented their project “Robots in Prison” at the ICSR in Odense (Denmark). They investigated whether collaborative and social robots can and should be used in prisons. One result was that modern industrial robots such as cobots and classic service robots such as transportation and cleaning robots hardly create any added value. Instead, they take work away from inmates. In contrast, social robots are conceivable and useful. They bring something to imprisonment that is common in freedom. And – an important point for resocialization – they can combat the loneliness of inmates. The International Conference on Social Robotics is the most important conference for social robotics alongside Robophilosophy. The paper “Social and Collaborative Robots in Prison” will be published in a proceedings volume by Springer at the end of the year.

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Robotics in Retail

September 25, 2024 was the first day of the AI & Robotics4Retail Conference 2024 in Bonn. It was part of the “ECR Day 2024”, which took place at the World Conference Center. Numerous practical presentations provide an insight into the most important AI and robotics topics in retail at the moment and provide important ideas for projects in your own company, according to the website. The keynote speech was given by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel on the topic of “Service robots from a technical, economic and ethical perspective”. From the description: “Service robots have become widespread as cleaning, transportation, and security robots. As vacuum and mopping robots, they can be found in households, airports and hotels. As transport robots, they move around factories and warehouses, move between the buffet and kitchen in restaurants or bring orders to customers in cities. In the form of social robots, they advise and serve us in shopping malls or entertain our children while we shop. Universal robots, human-like machines that help in production and logistics in the morning, dig up the garden in the afternoon and play tennis with us in the evening, are just around the corner. They are connected to multimodal language models that enable or improve their control and perception. The talk presents use cases of this kind, classifies them from a technical, economic and ethical perspective, and takes a look into the future.” Further information about www.robotics-konferenz.de.

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Closing Event of a Successful Conference

Robophilosophy 2024 took place for three and a half days in Aarhus (Denmark). It is a biennial dedicated to social robotics. Alongside the ICSR, it is the most important conference in this field. The program was again very extensive. Workshops were held and presentations given in four different tracks. There were keynotes and plenary sessions by well-known names, from Wendell Wallach to Hiroshi Ishiguro. After a sunny start, it began to rain, which made it all the easier to concentrate on the scientific exchange. In the end, the sun came out again in time for the closing event. Johanna Seibt, the brains behind Robophilosophy, received a bouquet of flowers and a standing ovation. The experts will meet again in two years’ time. Where has not yet been decided. A few potential hosts spoke up. Edinburgh would be an option, but so would California.

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The Rainbow Above the Museum

The Robophilosophy community consists of philosophers, psychologists, roboticists, and representatives of other disciplines. It is a tradition for everyone to come together for a social event to get new inspiration and chat about their work and motivation in an informal atmosphere. This time, they attended a robot performance in the theater on the second day. On the third day, the conference dinner was held together in the rooftop restaurant of the AROS Art Museum. One of the highlights was the tour of the ninth floor. The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has created Your rainbow panorama which was officially opened in May 2011. You can see Aarhus with its church towers, residential buildings, streets, and people through the colorful panes. Afterwards, the tireless went out into the city’s nightlife.

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Keynote by Melanie Mitchell

On the third day of Robophilosophy 2024, Melanie Mitchell, Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (USA), gave a keynote speech entitled “AI’s Challenge to Understanding the World”. From the abstract: “I will survey a debate in the artificial intelligence (AI) research community on the extent to which current AI systems can be said to “understand” language and the physical and social situations language encodes. I will describe arguments that have been made for and against such understanding, hypothesize about what humanlike understanding entails, and discuss what methods can be used to fairly evaluate understanding and intelligence in AI systems.” (Website Robophilosophy 2024) In this keynote – as in previous keynotes and presentations – the restrictions of AI and generative AI were emphasized. In response to a question from an audience member, the potential was also acknowledged.

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Keynote by Emily Cross

On the third day of Robophilosophy 2024, Emily Cross, a dancer and cognitive neuroscientist from ETHZ, gave a keynote speech entitled “Mind Meets Machine – Neurocognitive Perspectives on Human-Robot Interaction”. From the abstract: “Understanding how we perceive and interact with others is a core challenge of social cognition research. This challenge is poised to intensify in importance as the ubiquity of artificial intelligence and the presence of humanoid robots in society grows. This talk examines how established theories and methods from psychology and neuroscience are revealing fundamental aspects of how people perceive, interact with, and form social relationships with robots. Robots provide a resolutely new approach to studying brain and behavioural flexibility manifest by humans during social interaction. As machines, they can deliver behaviours that can be perceived as “social”, even though they are artificial agents and, as such, can be programmed to deliver a perfectly determined and reproducible set of actions. As development of service robots, home companion robots and assistance robots for schools, hospitals and care homes continues apace, whether we perceive such machines as social agents and how we engage with them over the long term remains largely unexplored. This talk describes research that bridges social cognition, neuroscience and robotics, with important implications not only for the design of social robots, but equally critically, for our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms supporting human social behaviour more generally.” (Website Robophilosophy 2024)

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Start of Robophilosophy 2024

On August 20, 2024, Robophilosophy 2024 was opened with words of welcome from Maja Horst, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Aarhus University, and Johanna Seibt, Professor of the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University. The website says: “The international research conference RP2024 will discuss the questions that really matter in view of the new technological potential of social robotics. In over 100 research talks, RP2024 will address concrete and deep issues that reach far beyond safety and privacy concerns into the conceptual and normative fabric of our societies and individual self-comprehension.” (Website Robophilosophy 2024) The first keynote on the first day of the conference was given by Wendell Wallach, one of the world’s best-known machine ethicists. With his book “Moral Machines” (2009), he laid the foundation for a discipline that has been developing in science fiction and science for years and decades. This was followed in 2011 by “Machine Ethics” by Michael Anderson and Susan L.eigh Anderson. In addition to machine ethics, Robophilosophy is dedicated to robot ethics and other interesting perspectives on social robots.

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Robot Dog Neo Interferes With IoT Devices

According to a report by 404 Media on 22 July 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acquired and modified a dog-like robot called NEO. This robot, equipped with an antenna array, can overload home networks to disable Internet of Things (IoT) devices during law enforcement operations. Benjamine Huffman, director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), revealed the details at the 2024 Border Security Expo. NEO, a modified version of Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60 quadruped unmanned ground vehicle (Q-UGV), helps disable potentially dangerous smart home devices that could be used as booby traps. This development follows an incident in 2021 in which a suspect used a doorbell camera to spy on FBI agents and shot at them, killing two agents. The DHS has also created the ‘FLETC Smart House’ to train officers on how to deal with IoT devices that could be used against them. Robotic pets are becoming increasingly popular with homeland security agencies and police forces. Boston Dynamics’ Spot is used on patrols in New York City and Germany.

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Deadline for ICSR 2024 Extended Again

The deadline for the International Conference on Social Robotics 2024 (ICSR 2024) has been extended again. Experts in social robotics and related fields have until July 19 to submit their full papers. The prestigious event was last held in Florence (2022) and Qatar (2023). Now it enters its next round. The 16th edition will bring together researchers and practitioners working on human-robot interaction and the integration of social robots into our society. The title of the conference includes the addition “AI”. This is a clarification and demarcation that has to do with the fact that there will be two further formats with the name ICSR in 2024. ICSR’24 (ICSR + AI) will take place as a face-to-face conference in Odense, Denmark, from 23 to 26 October 2024. The theme of this year’s conference is “Empowering Humanity: The role of social and collaborative robotics in shaping our future”. The topics of the Call for Papers include “collaborative robots in service applications (in construction, agriculture, etc.)”, “Human-robot interaction and collaboration”, “Affective and cognitive sciences for socially interactive robots”, and “Context awareness, expectation, and intention understanding”. The general chairs are Oskar Palinko, University of Southern Denmark, and Leon Bodenhagen, University of Southern Denmark. More information is available at icsr2024.dk (Photo: Jacob Christensen).