Lund University: RobotLab
Epi is a kind of human-like robot found in the Department of Cognitive Science at Lund University. The eyes are large and this is important because scientists in the humanities use the robots to study the interaction between robot and human. Work on the robots has now progressed so far that others may also be allowed to use them in experiments. This provides an opportunity for innovative constellations with researchers from different disciplines but also for representatives from the business world to investigate the intersection of soft values and robotics.
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Robots are not just a thing of the future — robots are already being used, for example, for vacuuming, mowing the grass and doing special tasks in industry. Even in healthcare, robots can be useful, such as a robot cat having a calming effect on elderly people in homes and robots dispensing food in hospitals. Robots are still very far from full-scale human intelligence — but what we can expect in the future is that robots will become more and more adapted, both technically and also by providing them with more characteristics that we think feel human. Before this can happen, those who develop robots must understand what characteristics would be important to program.
This is of interest to the Department of Cognitive Science at the Faculties of Humanities and Theology in Lund, where researchers are working, among other things, to try to understand how the human brain functions in terms of learning, memory, language and problem solving. Part of the activity is to map how people interact and through that understand what a robot needs to be able to do in order to cope with a certain interaction. The robot lab or “Cognitve Robotics Lab” (CRL) was started in the mid-90s and the department has since worked to rebuild the lab with several self-built versions of the robot Epi, either as a torso with arms or solely in the form of heads. Now the work has come so far that the lab can serve as a research infrastructure even for others who want to test the encounter between technology and man.
“Our and others' research concerns, among other things, how technology can help us better convey the robot's message. Now we could help with how robots should work so that people could understand them more easily,” says Birger Johansson, director of the Cognitive Robotics Lab.
In the spring of 2022, it will be possible to test the researchers' hypotheses both on one robot with a torso and three consisting of only heads. In addition, five new robotic heads are under construction by students. For some time now, it has also been possible for other faculties of the university to use the robots in their work.
