Department stores and grocery group John Lewis Partnership aims to find a formula for how robots and people should best interact as machines become ever more prominent participants in everyday life.
The retailer has linked with partners including agricultural robotics specialist Small Robot Company, which is working with partnership-owned grocer Waitrose & Partners on a trial of robot harvesting at the latter’s Leckford estate farm.
The project is designed to “foster and accelerate the safe and ethical adoption of robotics across British industry” at a time when the number of industrial robots active in the UK has risen by 30%, prompting fears about a nightmarish future for humans of unemployment and technological dictatorship.
The partnership and Small Robot Company’s Human Robotic Interaction blueprint will seek to define “the proper characteristics and states of the robot persona; how the user-robot relationship should function; how robots should be properly programmed to ensure people find them engaging, trust-provoking and safe; and how a robot should respond to humans it encounters during the course of its work”.
John Lewis futurologist John Varys aid: “Britain is a melting pot for robotics innovation and the use of autonomous robot technology to assist human workers is a very real prospect for the future.
“Before we get there, we need to define how that relationship works. The John Lewis Partnership started out as a radical experiment in industrial democracy and innovation continues to remain at the heart of our business today. Therefore we are uniquely placed to support businesses like the Small Robot Company as this technology evolves.”
Other participants in the scheme include the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and the Turing Institute.
Leverhulme Centre researcher Dr Karina Vold said: “It’s essential to consider the ethical and societal impacts of transitioning robots into human social environments. In particular, it’s important to take a holistic approach to design and implementation that considers all parties that could be affected, from developers to the general public. For this reason, I’m excited about the initiative to design best practices that are open, democratic, and adopted by many key players.”
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