The project ran for 78 months (6.5 years). During that time, the team contended with the entirety of the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (and the resulting lockdowns and research pauses), as well as the PI taking two periods of maternity leave. Despite some of the challenges introduced to the planned research program due to these disruptions, the team nonetheless accomplished most of the core aims set out in the Description of Action, with the exception of completing all the developmental studies planned (due to testing restrictions taking longer to lift for developmental populations, especially for brain imaging), and all of the cross-cultural studies (due to Japan's borders remaining closed even for citizens to travel into the country until less than 1 year before the project's finish).
With that being said, significant progress was made to the project goals with the first research stream being completed in its entirety, and the second and third research streams being completed nearly in their entirety. As such, our findings have yielded rich and methodologically-rigorous insights into how young adults, children and older adults perceive and interact with social robots, using brain imaging, behavioural and training measures, and the extent to which perceptions of and interactions with social robots are influenced by cultural background (Scottish vs. Japanese). From start to finish, we have focused on embracing Open Science methods, having preregistered each of our empirical studies, and shared all data, code, and materials for most of our studies (and all in this last and final reporting period). In addition, we devised and presented public engagement events based on the objectives of the project, ensuring individuals beyond academia are invested in and benefit from the research undertaken.
In total, the team produced 21 publications and 25 invited conference talks for the PI alone, as well as organised a multidisciplinary workshop on the social neurocognition of human robot interaction (Bangor University, August 2017) and a symposium on a similar topic at the 2018 HRI meeting in Chicago, USA. Moreover, two team members (Cross and Hortensius) served as co-editors of a theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B along with fellow ERC awardee, Agnieszka Wykowska, titled ‘From social brains to social robots: Applying neurocognitive insights to human-robot interaction’, published in 2019.
