Engaging society in the science of autonomous systems to co-create products is at the heart of the emerging Responsible Research and Innovation model for scientific research. We are working across disciplines and with partners in different sectors (clinical, industry, NGOs, local government, and national level) to co-design autonomous systems that address specific problems and global challenges. This approach is needed to bring scientific innovation out of the lab and into use in communities where these systems are needed.

Key topics

• human-robot interaction
• policy research
• ethics of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence
• trust and accountability
• agency and societies
• culture, communication, gossip and deception
• personalities and social roles, and their influence on social cognition and group behaviour
• the evolution of social structures, and of cognition more generally
• Political polarisation and the causal explanation of its correlation with income inequality
• synthetic emotions, and their impact on human-robot interaction
• robot and AI ethics: the ethical design of intelligent systems and their role in society