Tag: Roboethics

Posted on

Tamagotchi on Our Couch

On the first day (August 16, 2022) of the Robophilosophy conference, Katharina Kühne (University of Potsdam) presented a poster on a project she had carried out together with Melinda A. Jeglinski-Mende from the same university. Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW) was also involved in the margins. The paper is titled “Tamagotchi on our couch: Are social robots perceived as pets?”. The abstract states: “Although social robots increasingly enter our lives, it is not clear how they are perceived. Previous research indicates that there is a tendency to anthropomorphize social robots, at least in the Western culture. One of the most promising roles of robots in our society is companionship. Pets also fulfill this role, which gives their owners health and wellbeing benefits. In our study, we investigated if social robots can implicitly and explicitly be perceived as pets. In an online experiment, we measured implicit associations between pets and robots using pictures of robots and devices, as well as attributes denoting pet and non-pet features, in a Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT). Further, we asked our participants to explicitly evaluate to what extent they perceive robots as pets and if robots could replace a real pet. Our findings show that implicitly, but not explicitly, social robots are perceived as pets.” (Abstract) The poster is available here.

Posted on

Robots Dancing Like Bees

Robot-robot communication and interaction usually takes place via networks. Spoken language can also be used. In certain situations, however, these methods reach their limits. For example, during a rescue operation in disaster areas, communication via radio signals might not be possible. With this in mind, Kaustubh Joshi from the University of Maryland and Abhra Roy Chowdhury from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed an alternative approach. Their paper states: “This research presents a novel bio-inspired framework for two robots interacting together for a cooperative package delivery task with a human-in the-loop. It contributes to eliminating the need for network-based robot-robot interaction in constrained environments. An individual robot is instructed to move in specific shapes with a particular orientation at a certain speed for the other robot to infer using object detection (custom YOLOv4) and depth perception. The shape is identified by calculating the area occupied by the detected polygonal route. A metric for the area’s extent is calculated and empirically used to assign regions for specific shapes and gives an overall accuracy of 93.3% in simulations and 90% in a physical setup. Additionally, gestures are analyzed for their accuracy of intended direction, distance, and the target coordinates in the map. The system gives an average positional RMSE of 0.349 in simulation and 0.461 in a physical experiment.” (Abstract) The way of interaction and communication is reminiscent of the bee dance – and indeed this served as a model. The paper can be accessed via www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2022.915884/full.

Posted on

Transport Robots on the Streets of LA

Hundreds of transport robots are on the streets of Los Angeles for Coco, an American food delivery company. According to them, they cover all major neighborhoods in the city and save considerable time and money. As Engadget reports, Coco has now expanded beyond its home base. It says the service is already available in Austin, and will also be available in Dallas, Houston, and Miami in the future. The vehicles are controlled remotely by employees, from their own homes. Other providers, however, are focusing on autonomous mobility. Oliver Bendel was able to see for himself on site in Santa Monica at the beginning of April 2022 that the transport robots manufactured by Segway drive along the sidewalks and cross the streets in compliance with the rules. Still, he considers them – like the Starship Technologies devices that Swiss Post has experimented with – to be tripping hazards. In metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, moreover, vandalism is likely to be a problem. Still, delivery seems to work on the whole (Photo: Coco).

Posted on

Extended Deadline for the Robophilosophy 2022 Conference

Robophilosophy 2022 is the fifth event in the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series. The first call for papers (CfP) was published in November 2021, the second at the end of 2021, and the final on February 25, 2022. The extended deadline for submissions of extended abstracts and full papers is March 10, 2022. The event “will explore the societal significance of social robots for the future of social institutions with its usual broad scope, embracing both theoretical and practical angles” (CfP Robophilosophy). It “is an invitation to philosophers and other SSH researchers, as well as researchers in social robotics and HRI, to investigate from interdisciplinarily informed perspectives whether and how social robotics as an interdisciplinary endeavour can contribute to the ability of our institutions to perform their functions in society” (CfP Robophilosophy). Topics of interest are robots and social institutions in general, robots in law and policing, robots in healthcare, and robots and social justice, amongst others. The conference will be held at the University of Helsinki in Finland from August 16-19, 2022. More information via www.rp2022.org.

Posted on

Paper on the SPACE THEA Project

The paper “The SPACE THEA Project” by Martin Spathelf and Oliver Bendel was accepted at the AAAI 2022 Spring Symposia (Stanford University). The two authors will present it at the end of March 2022 at the symposium “How Fair is Fair? Achieving Wellbeing AI”. From the abstract: “In some situations, no professional human contact can be available. Accordingly, one remains alone with one’s problems and fears. A manned Mars flight is certainly such a situation. A voice assistant that shows empathy and assists the astronauts could be a solution. In the SPACE THEA project, a prototype with such capabilities was developed using Google Assistant and Dialogflow Essentials. The voice assistant has a personality based on characteristics such as functional intelligence, sincerity, creativity, and emotional intelligence. It proves itself in seven different scenarios designed to represent the daily lives of astronauts, addressing operational crises and human problems. The paper describes the seven scenarios in detail, and lists technical and conceptual foundations of the voice assistant. Finally, the most important results are stated and the chapters are summarized.” More information about the AAAI 2022 Spring Symposia is available here.

Posted on

The Hologram Girl Grew Up

Japanese company Gatebox has taken its holographic assistant to a new level in 2021 with the unveiling of Gatebox Grande. This is reported by HYPEBEAST. The hologram, which is now the size of an adult, is displayed on a 65-inch screen and can be used for applications such as a digital concierge or as an advisor and salesperson in a shopping mall. This makes the intelligent assistant a competitor to social robots like Pepper, Cruzr, and Paul. Inside the device “lives” a female anime character named Azuma Hikari, who can be “summoned” by voice or proximity activation. According to HYPEBEAST, she has a range of gestures, facial expressions, and voice tones to enable the most realistic interaction with the user. Life-size holograms will play a big role in the future. However, further research and development work is still needed.

Posted on

Beethoven’s Finished

Beethoven’s previously unfinished 10th Symphony – in short Beethoven’s Unfinished – has been completed by AI technology. “The work will have its world premiere in Germany next month, 194 years after the composer’s death.” (Classic fm, 28 September 2021) This is what Sophia Alexandra Hall writes on the Classic fm website on 28 September 2021. “The project was started in 2019 by a group made up of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists. Using artificial intelligence meant they were faced with the challenge of ensuring the work remained faithful to Beethoven’s process and vision.” (Classic fm, 28 September 2021) Dr Ahmed Elgammal, professor at the Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, said that his team “had to use notes and completed compositions from Beethoven’s entire body of work – along with the available sketches from the Tenth Symphony – to create something that Beethoven himself might have written” (Classic fm, 28 September 2021). You can listen to samples here. Whether the German composer would have liked the result, we will unfortunately never know.

 

Posted on

Xavier Plays Auxiliary Policeman

“Singapore’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) roving robot has hit the streets of Toa Payoh Central as part of a trial to support public officers in enhancing public health and safety.” (ZDNet, 8 September 2021) This is reported by the magazine ZDNet. “The robot, named Xavier, was jointly developed by HTX and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research. It is fitted with sensors for autonomous navigation, a 360-degree video feed to the command and control centre, real-time sensing and analysis, and an interactive dashboard where public officers can receive real-time information from and be able to monitor and control multiple robots simultaneously.” (ZDNet, 8 September 2021) Xavier is one of many security robots deployed around the world. Widely known are K3 and K5 from Knightscope. REEM is also used as a policeman and even costumed like a policeman – a case of Robot Enhancement. Whether the people of Singapore will accept security robots remains to be seen.

Posted on

The Idea of a Tesla Bot

Elon Musk presented the idea of a humanoid robot that – according to Manager Magazin – could take on dangerous, repetitive or boring tasks in the future. The Tesla Bot will be about five feet eight inches (just under 1.73 meters) tall, weigh 57 kilograms, and be able to do numerous jobs, from putting screws on cars to picking up groceries at the store – this is what the German magazine reports. It will be equipped with eight cameras and a full self-driving computer, and will use the same tools Tesla uses in its cars (Manager Magazin, 20 August 2021). According to the announcement, the robot will be able to take over physical work. But that’s exactly what service robots are struggling with at the moment, especially humanoid models. The visualization hardly allows any conclusions to be drawn about the capabilities of the prototype, which is to be available as early as 2022. Eyes and mouths could appear on a large display in the head area and mimic abilities could be implemented. When it is turned off – as seen in the video – the robot appears creepy and unapproachable. Arms and feet are unlikely to be suitable for carrying the body in this form. Joints can also only be seen in rudimentary form. Overall, it is unclear why Tesla, of all companies, should close the gaps that are still present at Sony, SoftBank and Boston Dynamics even after many years.

Posted on

Conversational Agent as Trustworthy Autonomous System

The Dagstuhl seminar “Conversational Agent as Trustworthy Autonomous System (Trust-CA)” will take place from September 19 – 24, 2021. According to the website, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik “pursues its mission of furthering world class research in computer science by facilitating communication and interaction between researchers”. Organizers of this event are Asbjørn Følstad (SINTEF – Oslo), Jonathan Grudin (Microsoft – Redmond), Effie Lai-Chong Law (University of Leicester) and Björn Schuller (University of Augsburg). They outline the background as follows: “CA, like many other AI/ML-infused autonomous systems, need to gain the trust of their users in order to be deployed effectively. Nevertheless, in the first place, we need to ensure that such systems are trustworthy. Persuading users to trust a non-trustworthy CA is grossly unethical. Conversely, failing to convince users to trust a trustworthy CA that is beneficial to their wellbeing can be detrimental, given that a lack of trust leads to low adoption or total rejection of a system. A deep understanding of how trust is initially built and evolved in human-human interaction (HHI) can shed light on the trust journey in human-automation interaction (HAI). This calls forth a multidisciplinary analytical framework, which is lacking but much needed for informing the design of trustworthy autonomous systems like CA.” (Website Dagstuhl) Regarding the goal of the workshop, the organizers write: “The overall goal of this Dagstuhl Seminar is to bring together researchers and practitioners, who are currently engaged in diverse communities related to Conversational Agent (CA) to explore the three main challenges on maximising the trustworthiness of and trust in CA as AI/ML-driven autonomous systems – an issue deemed increasingly significant given the widespread uses of CA in every sector of life – and to chart a roadmap for the future research on CA.” (Website Dagstuhl) Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW) will talk about his chatbot and voice assistant projects. These emerge since 2013 from machine ethics and social robotics. Further information is available here (photo: Schloss Dagstuhl).