Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn - 'Social Robots': a talk in the ECS Visiting Academic Seminar series Event

More and more robotics projects focus on human-robot collaboration and interaction scenarios, with applications in healthcare, service robotics, entertainment and manufacturing. Professor Dautenhahn's work currently includes basic research into HRI as well as application oriented research into the development of robot home companions and robot-assisted therapy for children with autism. The talk will emphasize the need for a highly user-centred approach towards design, development and evaluation of companion robots.

General findings from such work highlight the need for robots to be personalized and to learn cooperatively with the users. Thus, while companion robots don't necessarily need to be 'life-like' or humanoid in appearance and behaviour, they do need to deal with the complexity and dynamics of the social and non-social environments they operate in. The talk will outline challenges and opportunities of these research areas, avenues for future research, and will also comment on some common misconceptions of the reality and future of social robotics.