Public Funding for Consequential Robotics Limited

There is growing evidence that social robots able to interact with people through sound and touch, can help individuals cope with stress and anxiety. As robots are improved, they may also be able to provide other forms of social support for people in need of care, such as reducing the experience of depression and social isolation. This project builds on evidence that interacting with a suitably-designed pet-like robot can have some of the calming and supportive effects of interacting with a companion animal. We will work with multiple stakeholders in the healthcare and education sectors to understand how social robots could be used to support well-being in their settings, and how the robot's behaviour can be best adapted to assist people in specific scenarios. For example, we will explore how children could interact with a robot while they are waiting for a procedure such as a blood test or an operation, and how a social robot could operate as part of pastoral care in schools as a form of "classroom pet". Longer-term applications such as use of robots with older adults in residential care will also be explored. Outcomes of the project will include (i) an improved understanding of the use of social robots to promote health and well-being, (ii) a prototype pet-like robot for therapy and healthcare applications, and (iii) plans for efficacy studies and the production and marketing of a new UK-designed social robot.

This project will create a new e-learning environment for robotics, coding, and artificial intelligence (AI), using cloud computing, that is accessible to any student with a web browser. The environment will be low-cost and easy-to-use from home, school, college or university, and will promote STEM/digital education goals helping to prepare children, students, and people who have left full-time education, for current and future jobs in UK industry. Our project addresses the pressing need for new technologies for online/at home education created by the Covid-19 pandemic and will help address the skills deficit in digital technologies that threatens the future success of UK industry. The UK already faces significant skills shortages in these domains, and these are likely to be amplified by long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on international worker mobility. The key project objectives are: (1) to create an online learning environment for robotics accessible via cloud computing, and using accurate (full-physics) simulation, with interfaces suitable for both beginners and more advanced programmers; (2) to develop teaching materials that are tuned to UK education curricula, for home "kitchen-table" learning settings, and that are accessible and engaging for a diverse range of student groups; (3) to work with education partners to pilot, evaluate and improve the simulator and teaching materials; and (4) to explore remote control of physical robots, via the internet, to provide new ways of learning about coding, AI and robotics. The project extension will provide funding for updates to the created online educational interface MiRoCLOUD based on feedback from the rollout and testing in the original project. It will also provide the means for the international development of the product including the sourcing and cultivating more international users and recruiting partners through larger-scale Beta testing of new features and enhanced marketing. There will be targeted materials to help support international markets by supporting their national curricula. This will be accompanied by increased marketing effort utilising social media and focused content, and further community/market outreach with national and international competitions.

Consequential Robotics (CQR) is a new start-up founded to “enhance the experience of later life” by melding inspirational British design with state-of-the-art robotics. In fifteen years there will 50% more over 65s than there are today, and the proportion of older people in our society will continue to grow for some time after that. Robotic systems can help mitigate some of the most significant effects of this changing demographic. Specifically, a new generation of safe and human-friendly devices could assist in enabling independence of older citizens in their own homes. Current robots lack an integrated capability to recognise, and adapt their behaviour to, individual users. We aim to significantly improve the interaction abilities of assistive devices through advances to the state-of-the-art in the fields of person perception and human action recognition. We will to demonstrate this in the form of an animal-like robot companion, designed to provide social, assistive and therapeutic benefits for end users.