News & Events

July 2013

Making robots more trustworthy

The University of Liverpool is part of the 'Trustworthy Robotic Assistants' project, which will be looking at how robots can participate in sophisticated interactions with humans in an increasingly safe and trustworthy manner.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, it will address issues concerning the barriers between the robot and people that have hampered the development of human-robot interactions, including not only whether the robot makes safe moves but whether it knowingly or deliberately makes unsafe moves.

Professor Michael Fisher, Director of the University's Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology said: "The assessment of robotic trustworthiness has many facets, from the safety analysis of robot behaviours, through physical reliability of interactions, to human perceptions of such safe operation.

The aim of this project is to bring together robot designers, those researching the detailed analysis of autonomous systems and those assessing social interactions between humans and robots to provide a methodology for verification and validation that enables the design of safer and more trustworthy robotic assistants."

The project involves teams from the University of Liverpool's Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology (led by Professor Michael Fisher and Dr. Clare Dixon), the University of Hertfordshire's Adaptive Systems Research Group, and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, as well as Industrial partners including the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA) and RU Robots Limited.

Liverpool's researchers are internationally recognised for their research on logic, formal analysis, and the foundations of autonomy and, both within the multidisciplinary Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology and within the "Trustworthy Robotic Assistants" project, their role is to provide a rigorous formal basis for developing reliable, safe and trustworthy autonomous systems.

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