Tag: Social Robots

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A New Paper on Universal Robots

The paper “The Universal Robot of the 21st Century” by Oliver Bendel was published in February 2025 in the proceedings volume “Social Robots with AI: Prospects, Risks, and Responsible Methods” … From the abstract: “Developments in several areas of computer science, robotics, and social robotics make it seem likely that a universal robot will be available in the foreseeable future. Large language models for communication, perception, and control play a central role in this. This article briefly outlines the developments in the various areas and uses them to create the overall image of the universal robot. It then discusses the associated challenges from an ethical and social science perspective. It can be said that the universal robot will bring with it new possibilities and will perhaps be one of the most powerful human tools in physical space. At the same time, numerous problems are foreseeable, individual, social, and ecological.” The proceedings volume comprises the papers presented at Robophilosophy 2024 in Aarhus. Leading philosophers, computer scientists and roboticists met there in August. Like the ICSR, the conference is one of the world’s leading conferences on social robotics (Photo: Katharina Kühne).

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A Video About the ICSR 2023

ICSR is one of the leading conferences for social robotics worldwide. The 17th edition will take place from 10 to 12 September 2025 in Naples, Italy. Participants will meet for two days at the Parthenope University of Naples and for the third day at the Città della Scienza conference center. In 2023, the conference took place in Doha, Qatar. A video on YouTube by Hooman Samani provides insights into the presentations and events: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtgM8pTPw8c … It not only shows that numerous top-class presentations take place, but also that the members of the community are highly motivated and have a lot of fun. The high level of internationality and diversity of the conference should also be emphasized. The conference website of ICSR 2025 is online since January: icsr2025.eu.

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Cute little AIBI

Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel’s privately funded Social Robots Lab has been home to little AIBI since January 2025. It comes from the Chinese company LivingAI. Other robots and figures in the Social Robots Lab are Cupboo AI Robotic Pet aka Boo Boo, Unitree Go2, Alpha Mini, Cozmo, Vector, Furby, Tamagotchi, and Hugvie. HUGGIE was dismantled at the beginning of 2025 and given to a student project in which the robot laughs with a synthetic or natural voice. NAO and Pepper visit the lab and the elective module on social robots from time to time. AIBI has various sensors, a camera, and three microphones. It understands voice commands. For more complex questions, it connects to ChatGPT. The face consists of a display in which it can show animated eyes and animated scenes of all kinds. It stands on a platform that allows it to rotate 360 degrees. It can also turn its head freely. Similar to Cozmo, it emits numerous sounds and tries to attract the user’s attention in this and other ways. Thanks to its magnets, it can be attached to the fridge and other metal surfaces, as well as to an included necklace, transforming it into a wearable. It also transforms with accessories, for example into a cat. Robot enhancement is therefore included and supplied by the company.

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The ICSR 2025 Website is Now Online

The ICSR is one of the leading conferences for social robotics worldwide. The 17th edition will take place from 10 to 12 September 2025 in Naples, Italy. The conference website is now online: icsr2025.eu. “The conference theme, ‘Emotivation at the Core: Empowering Social Robots to Inspire and Connect,’ highlights the essential role of ‘Emotivation’ in social robotics. Emotivation captures the synergy between emotion and motivation, where emotions trigger and sustain motivation during interactions. In social robotics, this concept is key to building trust, fostering empathy, and supporting decision-making by enabling robots to respond sensitively to human emotions, inspiring engagement and action.” (Website ICSR) The most important conferences dates are: Full Paper Submission: March 28th, 2025; Full Paper Notification: May 9th, 2025; Camera-ready: June 30th, 2025; Paper Presentation Days at ICSR’25: September 11th and 12th, 2025. All dates are also listed on the website. Participants will meet for two days at the Parthenope University of Naples and for the third day at the Città della Scienza conference center. All buildings and rooms are also listed on the website. Be part of this excellent conference (Photo: ICSR)!

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Social Robots in Olten

The elective module “Social Robots” by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel took place from November 4 to 6, 2024 at the Olten Campus. Tamara Siegmann (with the online presentation of the paper “Social and Collaborative Robots in Prison”) was invited as a guest speaker. She made it clear to those present that every member of the university can make a contribution to research. On site were Pepper and NAO from the FHNW Robo Labs as well as Unitree Go2, Alpha Mini, Cozmo, Furby, and Booboo (aka Boo Boo) from Oliver Bendel’s privately funded Social Robots Lab. Unitree Go2 – also called Bao (Chinese for “treasure, darling”) by the lecturer – and Booboo were particularly well received. At the end of the elective module, the students designed social robots – also with the help of generative AI – that they found useful, meaningful or simply attractive. The elective modules have been offered since 2021 and are very popular.

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The Uncanny Social Robot

The uncanny valley effect is a famous hypothesis. Whether it can be influenced by context is still unclear. In an online experiment, Katharina Kühne and her co-authors Oliver Bendel, Yuefang Zue, and Martin Fischer found a negative linear relationship between a robot’s human likeness and its likeability and trustworthiness, and a positive linear relationship between a robot’s human likeness and its uncaniness. “Social context priming improved overall likability and trust of robots but did not modulate the Uncanny Valley effect.” (Abstract) Katharina Kühne outlined these conclusions in her presentation “Social, but Still Uncanny” – the title of the paper – at the International Conference on Social Robotics 2024 in Odense, Denmark. Like Yuefang Zue and Martin Fischer, she is a researcher at the University of Potsdam. Oliver Bendel teaches and researches at the FHNW School of Business. Together with Tamara Siegmann, he presented a second paper at the ICSR.

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Robots in Prison

On October 22, 2024, Tamara Siegmann and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW) presented their project “Robots in Prison” at the ICSR in Odense (Denmark). They investigated whether collaborative and social robots can and should be used in prisons. One result was that modern industrial robots such as cobots and classic service robots such as transportation and cleaning robots hardly create any added value. Instead, they take work away from inmates. In contrast, social robots are conceivable and useful. They bring something to imprisonment that is common in freedom. And – an important point for resocialization – they can combat the loneliness of inmates. The International Conference on Social Robotics is the most important conference for social robotics alongside Robophilosophy. The paper “Social and Collaborative Robots in Prison” will be published in a proceedings volume by Springer at the end of the year.

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Can and Should We Use Robots in Prisons?

Tamara Siegmann and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel carried out the “Robots in Prison” project in June and July 2024. The student, who is studying business administration at the FHNW School of Business, came up with the idea after taking an elective module on social robots with Oliver Bendel. In his paper “Love Dolls and Sex Robots in Unproven and Unexplored Fields of Application”, the philosopher of technology had already made a connection between robots and prisons, but had not systematically investigated this. They did this together with the help of expert interviews with the intercantonal commissioner for digitalization, several prison directors and employees as well as inmates. The result was the paper “Social and Collaborative Robots in Prison”, which was submitted to the ICSR 2024. The International Conference on Social Robotics is the most important conference for social robotics alongside Robophilosophy. The paper was accepted in September 2024 after a revision of the methods section, which was made more transparent and extensive and linked to a directory on GitHub. This year’s conference will take place in Odense (Denmark) from October 23 to 26. Last year it was held in Doha (Qatar) and the year before last in Florence (Italy).

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Keynote by Anthony Elliott

On the second day of Robophilosophy 2024, Anthony Elliott, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of South Australia, gave a keynote speech entitled “May AI Be With You: Agency and Automation in the Age of Algorithmic Modernity”. From the abstract: “From industrial robots to ChatGPT, and from driverless cars to military drones: AI is transforming all aspects of our lives, from the changing nature of work, employment and unemployment to the most intimate aspects of personal relationships. In this presentation, Anthony Elliott focuses on the complex systems of AI – spanning intelligent machines, chatbots, advanced robotics, accelerating automation, big data – and their centrality to new forms of social interaction, organizational life and governance. He argues, provocatively, that today modernity has come to mean smartphones, tablets, cloud computing, big data, automated recommendation systems and predictive analytics. This has heralded the arrival of what he terms ‘algorithmic modernity’, an altogether new ‘stage’ in the ordering techniques of envisioned human mastery. In this automated order of algorithmic modernity, human agency is increasingly outsourced to smart machines. We should understand this phenomenon, Elliott argues, in terms of a containment of both uncertainty and complexity which the digital revolution in social relations poses, but which ultimately denies answers.” (Website Robophilosophy 2024) In his presentation, the sociologist emphasised the risks of AI rather than the opportunities. The photo shows David Gunkel announcing Anthony Elliott’s lecture – he is sitting on the far left.

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Robots at Arm’s Length

The paper “Robots at arm’s length: Unveiling the dynamics of interpersonal distance preferences in human-robot interactions” by Katharina Kühne, Laura M. Zimmer, Melina Jeglinski-Mende, Oliver Bendel, Yuefang Zhou, and Martin Fischer was accepted at Robophilosophy 2024. The study focuses on the spatial distance between social robots and humans. According to the authors, the results have implications for the design of social robots and the optimization of interactions, especially in educational or medical contexts. Katharina Kühne is a PhD student in the Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group (PECoG) at the University of Potsdam. She has a diploma in language teaching, a master’s degree in linguistics, and a master’s degree in cognitive psychology. She is supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Fischer (University of Potsdam, head of the PECoG) and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (FHNW School of Business, associated researcher of the PECoG). The results of the study will be presented at Robophilosophy, which will take place in Aarhus from August 20 to 23, 2024.