FAILSAFE midpoint

FAILSAFE is part of Horizons Consumer Product Campaign. We are investigating the reality of robots entering the domestic setting through a lens of failure – how might domestic robots fail? What might the impacts of failure be? How can we prevent failure – or, if needed, recover from it? In short, how can domestic robots fail safely?

Our team is led by Ayse Kucukyilmaz and Bernd Stahl. They are supported by Harriet Cameron, Eike Schneiders, Victor Ngo, Horia Maior, Liz Dowthwaite, Simon Castle-Green, and Muhammad Chughtai.

The first phase of this research project is now complete following four successful workshops with roboticists and end users hosted at the Cobot Maker Space .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These workshops sparked multiple, passionate and fascinating debates about what actually constitutes a robot and highlighted myriad novel perspectives on failure. We also developed some exciting prototypes of domestic robots (LIL RED FELLA) below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on our findings from these workshops, we submitted a paper to the 2024 Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Symposium. In exploring failure, PI Ayse Kucukyilmaz also co-facilitated a workshop at the 2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation with friends of the project Francesco Del Duchetto and Marc Hanheide.

We now move on to the final stages of data collection, generating an online survey to validate and expand on the findings  – keep your eyes peeled for the link to take part very soon!

Tags: failure, ICRA, robots, Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub