This year I've been developing a project with a final year undergraduate in Computer Science at Bath, integrating the Instinct Reactive Planner with the Robot Operating System (ROS). The project has gone really well, resulting a flexible and powerful framework to enable the integration of ROS based robots with Instinct. The target platform used for the project is the Husarion ROSbot (shown). There is also a short video. For further details please contact me.
All posts by Robert Wortham
Battle of Ideas 2019 – Can you build a human?
I was delighted to be part of the panel for 'From Robots to AI: Can You Build a Human?' at the Barbican Centre in London a couple of weeks ago. Chaired by Timandra Harkness, along with … Continue Reading ››
AmonI UPDATE
Today I spent a couple of hours in hackathon mode with fellow members of the AmonI (Artificial Models of Natural Intelligence) research group at Bath . We decided it was time to bring the AmonI web pages up to date, so that the web site properly reflects our previous and current … Continue Reading ››
Bath TEDx – Will robots be our new best friends?
I'm looking forward to speaking at this TEDx event at the end of this month. The speaker lineup is diverse, and I'm sure we will all contribute in different ways to 'Light Up the Future' - the theme of these TEDx talks. I'll be speaking about how AI and robotics, in … Continue Reading ››
June 2018 Update
I've not posted anything here for a while now, so here is a quick update. I passed my PhD Viva in May, completed 9 hours of minor corrections, and will graduate in July. My PhD Dissertation - Using Other Minds: Transparency as a Fundamental Design Consideration for Artificial Intelligent Systems - will shortly be available on … Continue Reading ››
Why AI may fail to help us with solutions to our problems
These ideas have recently been reinforced after reading an excellent paper by Paul Rauwolf and Joanna Bryson - Expectations of Fairness and Trust Co-Evolve in Environments of Partial Information.
This is not a fully considered hypothesis, but I want to get it out there for comment, so please do.
Continue Reading ››
Robot Ethics – Engaging with the Public
This is a quick update. I'll put a proper page together when I have some more time. I've been doing quite a lot over the last few months to engage with non academics.
Here is my TEDx Frome in January at The Merlin Theatre, Frome
Here is a … Continue Reading ››
Reactive Planning for Robotics and Agent Based Models
This page has been created for the AISB Tutorial/Hackathon event, part of AISB2017 at the University of Bath, but may be used by anyone wanting to get practical hands-on experience with reactive planning for robot control.
Before reading this page, please read the Instinct Planner page for background information on reactive planning in … Continue Reading ››
Evolution – The key to understanding Humans and Robots
This week I am primarily focused on preparing my talk for the TEDx event in Frome on 28th January. I am giving a talk about how humans interact with robots, and why it is important that we design our robots to be understandable and transparent, rather than mysterious and deceptive.
However, as I started … Continue Reading ››
Robot Encounter and Transparency
Over the last year or so, one of my main research interests has been machine transparency. We've been using the R5 Robot in various 'robot encounter' experiments, both online using video recordings and in a live environment. We've shown that people do not naturally form good mental models of robots on first encounter. They … Continue Reading ››