SECURE has organised in total seven events to deliver training top-down in the form of organised lectures and skill courses, and events organised by the peer-network itself with the help and guidance of the consortium. The largest events were a peer-organised PhD conference SSR-2018 in Madrid together with the fellows from the ITN SOCRATES bringing together young scientists in the field of social robotics, and the final workshop at the ICDL-EPIROB conference in Oslo in collaboration with the fellows of the EID A.P.R.I.L.
In terms of scientific results, the fellows have presented results beyond the state of the art in all three competence areas. The fellows in the “Embodiment” area have made significant contributions to improve the control and design of robot embodiments. The work encompassed both, the hardware design of robots, leading to more efficient and safe hands for collaborative human-robot tasks (Alexis Billier), as well as controllers, leading to a better 3D-awareness (Chih-Hsuan Chen) and full-body control of the robot (Marie Charbonneau, Bruno Brito) which is essential to improve safety when sharing environments.
In the “Situation” area, the range of research reached from neuroscience, where human behaviour when handling objects in certain situations was investigated (Francois Foerster), to developments where human-like peripersonal space was implemented to guide robot movements (Phuong D.H. Nguyen). In between, language and phonetic features were used to infer information about the current context in human-robot interaction (Egor Lakomkin, Mohammad Ali Zamani). Here, sentiment and emotional cues have been shown to enable a robot to improve its recognition of unsafe situations through the interpretation of human reactions.
The goal of the competence area “Interaction” was to extract cues from an interaction which can be used to judge the safety context of the interaction. The fellows have conducted successful research in this domain, investigating the extent to which user’s trust (Alessandra Rossi) and stress level (Grigorios Skaltsas) can be measured or influenced. Also, cues about the user’s emotional state can be recognised in a dialogue, including user’s sentiment and politeness (Chandrakant Bothe). And finally, neural models have been made more efficient to extract such data faster and more reliably (Mohammad Thabet). Altogether, robots can learn and monitor cues throughout an interaction to be able to detect sudden changes in the behaviour of the user who might hint at external events influencing the user’s well-being.
All results have been published in 40 peer-reviewed articles and have been presented to a wide scientific community at major conferences and workshops. Due to their visibility and expertise, SECURE fellows have already been internationally invited to give invited talks on their topics, have already co-hosted workshops, and have been involved in conference organisation. This together shows already the impact the fellows have on the scientific community. To reach the general public, invited presentations have also been given at different public events (Nights of Knowledge, Science Festivals). Robot demonstrations, where fellows especially focused on explaining the need for their research, have been given to all members of the public, from children (e.g. at the European Researcher Night) to adults and elderly citizens (at Open Days and lab visits).
