Recently I had the opportunity to present about robots and emotion. This was a topic I’ve talked about before, and wrote about in my PhD thesis. Some of the ideas also came through in Robots and Communication, but as I prepared for The Future of Emotions conference I realised that quite a few of my thought had never really appeared in any of my publications. There were lots of new robots (and ideas) to be included, of course, and I had a great time giving this talk.

For once, I remembered to record my talk, so I’ve decided to upload it here, along with my notes as a form of transcript (because I did stick to my notes on this occasion). I’ve also included a list of links below the recording, so that you can locate the websites for the robots I discuss. I’ve not put up my slides, because there were some images that I only used under Fair Dealing for Research and Study, so don’t want to publish on the public web. However, by visiting the websites you’ll get to see the robots and bots in detail.

Websites for the robots that I discuss (in the order they appear):

Jules and Sophia www.hansonrobotics.com

Zo www.zo.ai

Ava www.soulmachines.com

Kismet www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/kismet.html

Jibo www.jibo.com

AUR robotic.media.mit.edu/portfolio/aur/

Shimon www.shimonrobot.com

D. O. U. G. sougwen.com/project/drawing-operations

It’s always a bit of a gift when an international conference takes place just down the road. (At least, that’s what I think, as someone who doesn’t really enjoy travelling to attend conferences that much although I always have a great time once I’m there). The University of Western Australia is where I studied for my PhD. It has a beautiful campus, which I admit I skived in order to explore in the beautiful sunshine (and, yes, winter in Western Australia is like this quite a lot of the time).

UWA in Winter (beautiful and sunny image of trees, grass and sky)

Please let me know if you have any problems accessing the recording or the notes through a comment or an email. This is the first time I’ve put up a talk in this way, so it’s an experiment.