Dr Gerard Canal - King's College London

Robots are starting to emerge in society, and they will soon enter our own homes to collaborate with us and help us in daily life. Robots that provide social and physical assistance have a huge potential to benefit society, especially for those who are frail and dependent. This has been observed during the Covid-19 outbreak, where assistive robots could help in the care of older adults at risk, in accessing contaminated areas, and in providing social assistance to people in isolation.
However, for these robots to be useful they need to be autonomous and robust, to be operated by non-expert users like any other household appliance. Nevertheless, autonomy requires that the robots are able to reason about the task they are performing. This implies knowledge of their capabilities, being able to reason about their goals, and deciding which can or cannot be achieved. They also need to check if the plan to be executed is applicable and modify it when needed, taking into account potential future issues. And as they are acting in a human environment, to communicate and explain these reasons to a human user.