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Robot security guards

The University of Lincoln is working on a multi-million pound project to create robots which will learn how to interact and work in the real world and potentially work as security guards and carers.

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Robots will learn to 'develop a common-sense attitude'

The main idea is to deploy robots that run for a long time so they have the chance to develop a common-sense attitude on how the world should be and be able to spot the deviations. The robots are curious to learn about the environment - they will see if something has changed and whether that's a one-off or a regular occurrence. Our robots will be active for long periods in dynamic and changing environments.

Currently industry robots can run for 24 hours a day and are incredibly reliable in well-controlled environments, but they don't use long-term experience to adjust or improve in any way. Cognitive robotics systems can learn and adapt, but most are used for just one experiment. We want to build a bridge between the two by creating robots that can run for long periods of time and also make use of life-long learning capabilities to adapt to the needs of different users.

– Dr Marc Hanheide, University of Lincoln's School of Computer Science

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