SECURE · Safety Enables Cooperation in Uncertain Robotic Environments

Safety Enables Cooperation in Uncertain Robotic Environments

The majority of existing robots in the industry are pre-programmed robots working in safety zones, with visual or auditory warning signals and little concept of intelligent safety awareness necessary for dynamic and unpredictable domestic environments. In the future, novel cognitive robotic companions will be developed, which should be able to learn from users and adapt to open dynamic contexts. The development of such robot companions leads to new challenges for human-robot cooperation and safety, going well beyond the current state of the art. The SECURE project trained a new generation of twelve researchers on safe cognitive robot concepts for human work and living spaces on the most advanced humanoid robot platforms available in Europe. The main goal of SECURE was to prepare twelve young scientists for a career in academia and industry in the growing field of social robotics and human-robot collaboration. SECURE has successfully achieved this goal and, through collaboration with industrial partners and other MSCA actions, has given all fellows excellent opportunities for future employments and collaborations. SECURE fellows have already successfully transferred to jobs in top-tier international companies (Egor Lakomkin, Amazon Alexa; Chih-Hsuan Chen, Nobleo Technologies), have founded start-ups (Chandrakanth Bothe), are working on academic-industrial transfer projects with large companies (Mohammad Ali Zamani), or are continuing their research at top research institutes in Europe (Alessandra Rossi, University of Hertfordshire; Francois Foerster, INSERM Strasbourg; Grigorios Skaltsas, University of Hertfordshire; Mohammad Thabet, University of Manchester; Alexis Billier, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Genoa; Bruno Brito, Technical University Delft; Phuong D.H. Nguyen, University of Hamburg) and Canada (Marie Charbonneau, University of Waterloo). Therefore, the ideas and results developed within SECURE have reached all employment sectors, and innovative work has been carried out by twelve highly skilled researchers that are prepared to build the social robots of the future.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union