Project description
Making robots truly personal
Loneliness and mental health challenges are increasingly prevalent issues today. Social robots represent a promising solution, offering companionship and assistance in daily tasks, which can enhance overall well-being. However, current social robots often lack the adaptability needed to sustain meaningful interactions over extended periods. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SOCIALADAPT project will integrate social robots with AI-powered recommender systems. Specifically, the project seeks to enhance their intelligence. This includes better understanding user preferences through interactive, multisensory experiences, enabling personalised and adaptive responses. Through advancements in conversational abilities and social skills for virtual humanoid agents, SOCIALADAPT aims to illuminate new ways in which humans interact with technology.
Objective
Social robots, conceived to provide companionship, emotional support, and assistance with daily tasks, play a crucial role in promoting mental health and wellbeing, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Despite advancements in social robots’ ability to understand and respond to humans, they have limited capabilities in personalization and adaptivity, which are crucial for ensuring long-term user engagement. Meanwhile, given the rapid growth of the AI-driven e-commerce market and the widespread adoption of Large Language Models, conversational recommender systems have become a popular tool for providing recommendations and information. While most recommenders effectively sustain long-term user engagement in real-world applications, they are typically regarded as non-embodied agents, overlooking their social roles in interactions. SOCIALADAPT aims to enable social robots and recommender systems to benefit from each other and achieves the following objectives: for social robots, i) inferring user preferences from multi-modal interactions, and ii) personalized and adaptive responses for long-term use; for recommender systems, iii) integrating conversational recommenders with humanoid embodiments, and iv) evaluating the embodied recommender. To address the first objective, the candidate will use multimodal recommendation methods to infer short-term and long-term user preferences. For the second, she will develop a reinforcement learning method that learns from inferred user preferences to generate adaptive responses. The third objective entails integrating recommendations with virtual humanoid embodiments generated by generative AI. For the fourth, she will evaluate users’ social presence when interacting with the recommender through use studies, in compliance with data privacy. The candidate expects to advance her research career and contribute to the intersection of social robotics and recommender systems, becoming one of the leaders.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.