Robots are a form of AI that can sense, move through and act on the everyday world, including on our own human bodies. Enabling robots to collaborate with humans might bring many benefits in care, mobility, manufacturing, the arts and more besides. However, it also requires tackling deep research challenges that arise when people engage in physical and intimate contact with intelligent machines, from ensuring safety to understanding emotional experience. There is much research in the field of human-robot interaction into the design of robot bodies and minds, however there is a lack of understanding the corresponding human experience.
Our Somabotics – Creatively Embodying Artificial Intelligence Fellowship will purse a distinctive approach to this challenge based on two ideas:
- Building on a new design method called soma design, an approach that provides techniques and toolkits for placing the human body at the centre of technology design and has already proved beneficial to application in health and wellbeing.
- Engaging the creativity of artists by building on a long track record of artist-led research that has delivered creative applications of technologies surfacing new design concepts, involving the public to consider societal questions and supporting impact for the creative industries.
The Fellowship will combine soma design with artist led creativity to tackle three core challenges:
- How can we extend robot and human minds-bodies to better engage the complexity and diversity of human embodies experience? (bringing together researchers, artists and diver users to explore key facets of embodied experience and prototype technologies that augment robots and humans using SOMA DESIGN).
- How can this benefit people by enabling them to improve their aesthetic bodily practices and what societal concerns need to be addressed? (partnering with artists to embed these new techniques into high profile artworks that give audiences powerful personal experiences of robots which provoke meaningful conversations about potential benefits and harms)
- How can this benefit the AI community’s capacity to undertake move creative research into embodiment? (reflecting the resulting portfolio of prototypes and artworks to generalise concepts, methods and tools that enable a fundamental reappraisal of longstanding challenges for AI around trust, decision making, planning and emotion).
The ‘Somabotics’ team will engage diverse human and robots in an iterative soma design process to identify novel concepts and enabling technologies, partnering with two internally renowned artists to create and tour artworks.
Activity will also involve engaging with the wider AI community through visits and exchanges, presence at key AI venues, hosting a symposium, summer school and releasing a data driven soma bits toolkit.
We will work with industry, media and the public through touring artworks, a media campaign and a show for science festivals. A team of 4 post-doctoral researchers, 3 transitional assistant professors and three PhD students will be formed in the first stages of the programme and these will go on to lead their own projects later on.
The result will be to raise the profile of embodiment as a critical concern for AI and to transform how the AI community approaches it – placing human bodily experience at the focus and bringing a greater creativity, disruption and public engagement to AI research.