Year by year, robots become better and better at negotiating each time more complex social interactions with humans. However, much as their social intelligence has improved, these interactions still suffer from a lack of transparency. In other words, unlike humans, robots are not capable of understanding and explaining their actions in intentional terms, which prevents them from having more effective communication with humans. To the joy of robots and humans alike, this challenge is now addressed by the What You Say Is What You Did (WYSIWYD) project, launched earlier this year.

The project, coordinated by the SPECS lab at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, will develop an autobiographical memory that can store data streams obtained by the robot in the form of a consistent personal narrative of the interaction history. Furthermore, the researchers intend to devise a mechanism of conversion of this memory data into meaningful linguistic structures that can be subsequently expressed in speech and communicative actions through a specific channel dubbed WYSIWYD Robotese, thus improving mutual understanding between robots and humans.

WYSIWYD is an interdisciplinary effort that will draw from the fields of robotics, cognitive science, psychology and computational neuroscience. The project largely builds on the previous success of the efAA project, also coordinated by SPECS. WYSIWYD is scheduled to run for 3 years, and hopefully will bring about a qualitative change in human robot interaction and cooperation as well as unlock new application areas in robotics.

The main research platform for the project is everybody’s favourite iCub robot, developed by the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan, which is also one of the universities participating in the collaboration. iCub will be used in combination with another amazing piece of technology Reactable, an interactive table interface.

iCub has recently celebrated its 10^th anniversary. Watch the video below to see how the robot and its capabilities evolved throughout a decade.

This week, from March 10-11, over 2000 people from a variety of sectors involved in research, innovation and science gathered to take part in the 2nd Innovation Convention. The event, held this year in Brussels, is a key initiative of the Innovation Union, which aims to make Europe a more innovation-friendly environment – an idea that lies at the core of the European Union’s 2020 strategy.

This year’s Convention attracted a whole range of inspirational speakers from top CEOs to young innovators and provided a platform to debate and inform innovation policies as well as a great networking opportunity.

A remarkable highlight of this year’s convention was a special selection of “Innovation Showcases” which gave the visitors a chance to explore a number of interactive demonstrations related to some of the most fascinating ideas, products and services such as 3D-printing, nanotechnology and supersonic transport. It is worth noting that the majority of the showcases were made possible – directly or indirectly – by EU-funded research projects. The field of robotics that excites us most was represented this year by the efAA project, which develops new ways of having meaningful social interactions with robots. The showcase featured an iCub robot that engaged visitors in a social musical game.

The closing ceremony was marked by the announcement of the European Capital of Innovation (iCapital) prize, which this year went to Barcelona “for introducing the use of new technologies to bring the city closer to citizens”. The prize was established by the European Commission as a means of encouraging cities to make efforts to promote innovation and improve the quality of their citizens’ lives.

From November 6–8, nearly 5000 of Europe’s top researchers, engineers, industry representatives, politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, and students gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania to share insight and future visions for the future of ICT in Europe. The global event also provided  an inspiring setting for the discussion of European ICT policy as well as networking opportunities for business, research, and innovation groups.

The event —the largest in Vilnius during Lithuanian’s presidency of the EU Council— folds into a greater European initiative: the EU Horizon 2020 programme. This visionary plan, combines EU funding for both scientific research, and innovation. This year’s event included: an international conference, an exhibition, a networking session, an investor forum and events for students and junior researchers.

The exhibition involved over 180 participants from the ICT community. CSN (the Convergent Science Network) was well received with an exhibit co-organized by the project efAA (Experimental Functional Android Assitant, – EU Robotics Unit of DG Connect- ). The interactive installation titled “The Machine and I“ displayed graphics and drawings that provided futuristic visions of robots and their roles in human society. The project efAA, represented at ICT 2013 by the research group SPECS - UPF – Barcelona and by IIT, the Italian Institute of Technology, gave the iCub a chance to express it’s musical side as it entertained exhibit visitors through musical games as the DJ droid.

Over 40 international presenters covered various topics: from broadband Internet to cybersecurity and nanomaterials to artificial modeling of the human brain. Students and junior researchers had the opportunity to meet many of the conference speakers and other ICT-savvy representatives, later sharing their experience through social media.

The investor forum provided a perfect place for small and medium-sized ICT business owners and entrepreneurs to present their projects to investors, participate in special training programmes, and discuss key issues with business experts and corporate investors.

Events like this get just about everyone thinking: how will future technologies change the lives of those in generations to come?

Chimps, birds and bees are just a few of the many animals that communicate with each other when searching for food. Since everyone’s got to eat, communication during foraging is essential among social animals. In order to study how different types of communication strategies might evolve, the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) teamed up to conduct a joint research project.

¨Animal kingdom communication systems are very complex¨ points out Laurent Keller (UNIL), one of the project’s lead researchers along with Steffen Wischmann and Dario Floreano (EPFL). In fact, a lot of these systems are so complex, researchers must devise models in order to understand them more thoroughly. Using 100 groups of 20 robots, researchers studied the evolution of communication strategies among the robots throughout 1000 generations.

Each robot was able to communicate the presence of a virtual food source through the use of a light that could be shone in various colours. They were also equipped with wheels and cameras giving them mobility and awareness of their environment. What was guiding the robots’ behaviour? Genes of course! Just as in nature, these were made to evolve through mutation and selection through out the course of successive generations.

Results of this research stress that random factors seem to be an important part of evolutionary processes; distinct communication systems evolved among groups of robots operating in identical environments. The study also showed that populations that have developed a fairly effective communication strategy are not likely to drop it for the next strategy that comes along because to do so would require significant changes in the way information would be transmitted and received. This is similar to the reason why human languages are unlikely to change rapidly through generations.

You can read more about this research recently published in the PNAS  (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States) magazine and if you’re interested in other European projects involving the development and use of social robots, check out the Robot Companions for Citizens Flagship Initiative which Dario Floreano is also involved in. You may also be interested in the European project EFAA (Experimental Functional Android Assistant) which is  coordinated by the SPECS lab at Pompeu Fabra University.