Pint of Robotics: Ruby Hornsby, Alistair Bacchetti, David Russell

Speaker 1: Ruby Hornsby (University of Leeds)

Bio: Ruby Hornsby is a PhD student at The University of Leeds (Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Center) studying the Ethics of Social Robotics. Her project focuses on addressing whether robots and humans can be friends with one another, and scrutinising ethical implications that might arise as robots increasingly become a part of intimate human life.

Abstract:  Trigger Warning: This talk will discuss themes of sexual violence. The term ‘sex robot’ often elicits strong reactions, from great excitement and curiosity, to repulsion and frank disgust. Although this technology is still in the relatively early stages, you can buy a sex robot on the market today for around $6000 that is capable of sustaining eye contact, engaging in conversation, and learning user preferences. In a co-authored paper with Dr Natasha McKeever, 'Is it wrong to have sex with a robot?' (2022), we argue that it is still possible to limit the damage the sex-robot industry could cause, whilst accepting that some forms of robot-sex should be embraced, not stigmatised. Join the debate: Is it ethical to have sex with a robot? what should sex-robot technology be like? And what kind of place we should allow sex-robots to have in our intimate life?

https://www.publicethics.org/post/is-it-wrong-to-have-sex-with-a-robot

Speaker 2: Alistair Bacchetti (University of Glasgow)

Bio: Alistair is a final year MEng Biomedical Engineering undergraduate at the University of Glasgow. He joined the STORM Lab in June 2022 as a visiting Master’s student, and is currently undertaking a six-month project which focuses on the fabrication and characterisation of tapered soft magnetic tentacle robots for aortic arch navigation. His interests include the fabrication and miniaturisation of soft magnetic robots, leading to his recent mini review publication on miniaturised programmable domains for biomedical soft magnetic robots. Throughout his project, Alistair has also spent time in the Future Manufacturing Processes Lab, collaborating with academics on several advanced fabrication projects. These include the optimisation of dual aerosol jet printing for the automated fabrication of submillimetre soft magnetic structures, and the characterisation of miniaturised soft magnetic continuum robots fabricated via automated dual material extrusion.

Abstract: Throughout recent years, the area of magnetically driven soft devices has received significant recent attention, driven by a demand for the fabrication and control of milli- and submillimetre scale soft magnetic robots for biomedical applications. This has resulted in a new generation of magnetically controlled soft robots with patterns of embedded, programmable domains throughout their structures. This type of programmable magnetic profiling equips magnetic soft robots with shape programmable memory and can be achieved through the distribution of discrete domains (voxels) with variable magnetic densities and magnetisation directions. This has produced highly compliant, and often bio-inspired structures that are well suited to biomedical applications at small scales, including microfluidic transport and shape-forming surgical catheters. However, to unlock the full potential of magnetic soft robots with improved designs and control, significant challenges remain in their compositional optimization and fabrication. Through a combination of improvements in the computational capacity of novel optimization methods with advances in the resolution, material selection and automation of existing and novel fabrication methods, significant further developments in programmable magnetic soft robots may be achieved.

 Speaker 3: David Russell (University of Leeds)

Bio: David is a second year PhD student in the robotics manipulation lab. Before starting his PhD, Dave completed his masters in Mechatronics and Robotics, also at the University of Leeds, with a year working in Industry as an electrical design intern at Eaton Electrical.

Abstract: Robots that will operate in cluttered and unstructured environments need to leverage complex action primitives to complete their tasks. These actions are typically referred to as non-prehensile manipulation and humans use them all the time in daily life seamlessly, but currently robots require long planning times to compute motion plans that utilise these actions. David’s research is based on using physics-based trajectory optimisation techniques to compute these plans faster than is currently available.