Currently most cognitive and social robots only operate in the here and now, the ALIZ-E project aims to move human-robot interaction from the range of minutes to the range of days. The project will develop the theory and practice behind embodied cognitive robots capable of maintaining believable any-depth affective interactions with a young user over an extended and possibly discontinuous period of time.
Scientific and technological goals
Prolonged human-robot interaction over a range of days instead of in the here and now.
Robotic companions in child-robot interaction. Different from adult-robot interaction, more promising applications.
Robust “any-depth" interaction. Robustness against low-quality perception and interpretation.
Out of the lab into the real world: the robot will be evaluated in paediatrics department.
Long-term memory and self-sustained long-term interaction. Key to long-term interaction is having a personalised adaptive memory storing experiences and interaction episodes.
Analysis and synthesis of emotion and affect in human-robot interaction.
Pervasive machine learning and adaptation. Learning experiences will be unstructured. Learning will rely on an array of different approaches.
Cloud computing as computational resource on autonomous systems.
Science and technology
The robots will use a distributed model of long-term memory, which acts as a switch board for other cognitive modalities.
The robots will rely on adaptive and sustainable non-verbal interaction, taking an embodied perspective to affective interaction.
The user and task modelling will be adaptive, as the robot adapts its behaviour to different user profiles and employs user-specific strategies to achieve a goal.
Verbal interaction aimed at long-term interaction will be strongly coupled with non-verbal interaction.
Evaluation will involve young users outside a lab environment. The main evaluation site will be the Hospital San Rafaelle in Milan, Italy.
The integration of cognitive components will be based on cloud computing for embedded systems.
Source: Aliz.e
