Developing long-term relations with robots

Pleo and Glowbots

13 April 2008

Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London are leading an international project which is set to advance the relationship between robots and humans, as part of new European project called LIREC - Living with Robots and Interactive Companions.

LIREC aims to create a new generation of interactive, emotionally intelligent, companion technology, that is capable of long-term engagement with humans – in both a virtual (graphical) world, and in the real-world (as robots). The project will also be the first in the world to examine how we react to a familiar companion entity when it swaps from a robot body into a virtual form, for example on a computer screen.

The Queen Mary team are leading a consortium of nine other internationally leading European partners, who intend to develop and study a variety of robots and other autonomous interactive companions during the four-year project.

Professor Peter McOwan, from Queen Mary’s Department of Computer Science, explained: “We’re interested in how people can develop a long-term relationship with artificial creatures, in everyday settings. You may not be able to find a robot that can help you do the dishes anytime soon, but we’re hoping to explore how such friendly future technology could be developed, and start to predict what the intelligent machines of tomorrow might look like, and how we should treat them.”

LIREC will first look at existing technology to study people’s perceptions of robots. This includes entertainment robots like Pleo, which is an interactive toy dinosaur available commercially; and GlowBots - small wheeled robots that communicate with each other and users through colourful patterns of light.

Other robots will include ‘iCat: the Affective Chess Player’ – a robotic game buddy whose behaviour and expressions are influenced by the state of play; as well as the child-sized minimally expressive humanoid ‘KASPAR’, and ‘peoplebots’, which are enhanced by humanoid features.

LIREC will also look for inspiration in creating synthetic companions from studies of the way that humans and pet dogs bond and interact.

The £6.5m grant involves partners from seven countries and will run for four and a half years. The project kicks off on 17/18 April when the research partners convene for the first time.

Ends

High resolution images of ‘Pleo’ and ‘GlowBots’ - some of the robots that will be studied by researchers in the LIREC project - are available on request (please credit SICS) from s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk

Video footage of the iCat robot in action (please credit INESC-ID) is available at:
http://web.tagus.ist.utl.pt/~iolanda.leite/icat_video_wmv.wmv

The LIREC project is funded by an FP7 (European Union) Grant. The partner institutions are: Queen Mary, University London; Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS); Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigacao e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID); University of Hertfordshire; Otto-Friedrich – Universitat Bamberg; Heriot Watt University; Wroclaw Institute of Technology; Eotvos University; Foundation of Aperiodic Mesmerism; Cnotinfor Ltd.

For further information, please contact:

Siân Halkyard
Acting Head of Communications
Queen Mary, University of London
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7882 7454
email: s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary, University of London is one of the UK's leading research-focused higher education institutions with some 15,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Amongst the largest of the colleges of the University of London, Queen Mary’s 3,000 staff deliver world class degree programmes and research across 21 academic departments and institutes, within three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Queen Mary is ranked 11th in the UK according to the Guardian analysis of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, and has been described as ‘the biggest star among the research-intensive institutions’ by the Times Higher Education.

The College has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

Queen Mary has an annual turnover of £220 million, research income worth £61 million, and generates employment and output worth £600 million to the UK economy each year.

Queen Mary, as a member of the 1994 Group of research-focused universities, has made a strategic commitment to the highest quality of research, but also to the best possible educational, cultural and social experience for its students. The College is unique amongst London's universities in being able to offer a completely integrated residential campus, with a 2,000-bed award-winning Student Village on its Mile End campus.

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