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 SocCred project aims to assess how potentially conflicting safety and social behaviour requirements on a robot may be managed. Researchers will be conducting a series of experiments which examine the social acceptability of certain robot behaviours, and the effect that these have on a user's willingness to respond to the robot's safety alerts. Early results and analyses from the SocCred project will be presented at the 9th International Conference on Performance, Safety and Robustness in Complex Systems and Applications (PESARO 19) in March 2019.

Read more about this project at the AAIP project site.