FAILSAFE

Future domestic robotic assistants will be complex hybrid consumer products, integrated into human living spaces to perform daily tasks with us. While robotics technologies have seen a rapid advance in the last decade, state-of-the-art robotic systems are still challenged by frequent failures, especially for long-term autonomy. This is a potential barrier against acceptability and trustworthiness of these future systems. Through a socio-technical multidisciplinary approach, this project aims to develop an understanding of robotic failures and explore how people perceive and resolve robot failures as an effort to design human-robot interactions that can enhance consumer experience of future robotic systems.

This project will explore the potential of using a robotic arm to aid humans with the task of unloading a dishwasher in the home environment to facilitate the future uptake of the technology and aid inclusion/accessibility and independence of users in a range of settings.

Project team: Ayse Kucukyilmaz, Eike Schneiders, Bernd Stahl, Horia Maior, Murray Goulden, Liz Dowthwaite, Pablo Lopez-Custodio, Simon Castle-Green

Project partner: Beko (Dr Muhammad Chughtai)

Project start date 1 April 2023 – 30 September 2024

Introduction blog,

This project sits within Horizon’s Consumer Products Campaign