Robot House

Robot House is present at the UK's largest dedicated Robotics and Automation Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham on 19th and 20th March 2024. Join us at stand 1050 to learn about the newest Robot House research projects and live interact with some of our robots to see how we design human-robot interaction experiments.

The University of Hertfordshire and Robot House researchers have been awarded a grant from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme as part of the SWAG (Soft Wearable Assistive Garments) project to create exoskeletal devices designed to assist strain-prone areas of the human body, focusing on the core and lower body. The project is a multidisciplinary initiative in the field of soft robotics, focusing on the development of soft lower extremity exosuits, or "soft wearable robots", for the lower body and core.

We would like to invite you to join us in the Robot House and support the robot residents helping the team get ready for the summer holidays! While the team are packing their bags, you will be able to decide how the robots should support us, for example, planning the journey and what to pack, providing food or drinks, or informing our friends about our schedule. You will participate in an engaging and fun scenario while learning how our robots can interact with humans, how they work internally, and what research questions we address in such scenarios.

The EMERGENCE network are delighted to announce a Co-creation Methodology Workshop in Hertfordshire to learn more about the second Robotics for Frailty Challenge funding call. This workshop will be aimed at individuals who are interested in submitting proposals for the call and also at those who are interested in learning more about co-creation for designing healthcare robotics solutions.

As part of the EPSRC Network+ project EMERGENCE, we are looking to fund research-driven proposals that engage with Robot House and other living labs within the network to advance the state of the art of robotics towards being capable of transforming community health and care, with an emphasis on real-world adoption and deployment.

Robot House celebrates the UK Festival of Robotics 2022, running from 19 – 25 June 2022 to celebrate UK robotics in three events. Robot House researchers are participating in a live recording of the Robot Talk podcast, invite viewers to visit the house virtually in a mass simultaneous live streaming event, and join a local school with their interactive robot technology to explore.

We are looking for a strong student for a dual PhD award in human-robot interaction, robotics and AI as a cooperation between the University of Hertfordshire (UK) and Western Sydney University (AU) with a focus on activity recognition.

Robot House has been accepted and confirmed as a part of Robot Lab Live 2022, a virtual showcase of cutting-edge robotics technology, and the flagship event of the UK Festival of Robotics.

What does the future of robots look like? This and other questions have been asked to Dr Patrick Holthaus, who was interviewed by Jack, age 8, in his fortnightly podcast Jack to the future, an award-winning podcast for children and grownups.

The 4th UK-RAS virtual conference for PhD and Early Career Researchers will be hosted by Robot House researchers on 2nd June 2021. Congruously, our theme for this year is Robotics at Home.

Can Robots save the NHS? ITV Tonight's Dr Oscar Duke visits Robot House to investigate how care robots could be used to help support our aging population and the demands on social care.

Robot House will join .helloworld@Herts Computing Fair and Fun Day again this upcoming weekend. During the whole of the event, two PhD students will present Robot House research and provide the possibility to live interact with Pepper, observe its capabilities, and gain insights about its inner workings.

Robot House contributes to dialogue between science and religion. We invited members of the Church of England to visit Robot House and discuss about our robotics research and how that can relate to faith.

We are excited to join .helloworld - Hertfordshire Hackathon with a Fetch and a Pepper robot this upcoming weekend.
During the whole of the event, we will provide the possibility to live interact with a Pepper and a Fetch robot, observe their capabilities, and gain insights about their funcional principles.

An academic launch day introduced the upgraded Robot House as a state of the art facility that can support research in ambient-assisted and companion technology, in an authentic environment. Besides showcasing the infrastructure and data, graduate students have been involved in presenting their research during the event highlighting how the robot house enabled them in their doctoral project.
During the launch, visitors explored the robot house through different exhibits in an open atmosphere that promoted discussion and knowledge exchange. A second launch event is planned for engaging with local companies, regarding how they may benefit from the infrastructure available at the Robot House, to support their product testing.

Researchers in the Robot House are beginning a new project which explores the link between effective safety performance of a robot and its social credibility.

Dr Catherine Menon and Dr Patrick Holthaus are using the facility for the SocCred project, which is funded by the Assuring Autonomy International Programme.

The Robot House has welcomed a visiting researcher from University of Oslo’s Research Group for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (ROBIN).

Doctoral research fellow Trenton Schulz is using the facility to design new, user-centred adaptive technologies for use in care settings, as part of the Group’s Multimodal Elderly Care Systems (MECS) project, funded by the Research Council of Norway.
The overall aim of the project is to create and evaluate mobile robotic systems that can sense, learn and predict future events in a home environment, such as falls among older people.

To celebrate UK Robotics Week 2018 at the end of June, we gave local primary and secondary school pupils the chance to experiment first-hand with a number of our robots.

The Adaptive Systems Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire is organising two events for the UK Robotics Week 2018 that introduce school children to robotics research and our Robot House residents.