Beyond user-friendly
The next breakthrough in interactive technology may not be about how fast, or powerful, or user-friendly it is. Professor Peter McOwan, from Queen Mary’s Department of Computer Science explains, ‘You’ve heard of user-friendly software. What we are trying to do is develop the next stage of that, which is user-friendship software.’

A team of scientists at Queen Mary in London are leading a group of nine international partners in a major study called LIREC – Living with Robots and Interactive Companions. ‘The LIREC project,’ explains McOwan, ‘is about developing something called “companion technologies”, ways of giving computers and robots the ability to build some form of meaningful relationship with their users. You actually feel that the computer is on your side, that you are able to interact in a much more naturalistic way.’

Meaningful relationship
The LIREC group encompasses a wide range of skills and scientists exploring areas where science, psychology and human behaviour meet. A group at Heriot Watt University, for example, are investigating cognition and shared memory and how that might be played out in a meaningful relationship between human and robot. And a group in Portugal are looking at the cues we give in our tone of voice.

‘And our part,’ says McOwan, ‘is looking at how we can develop vision systems for these companion technologies. If you think of an interaction with a friend, visual cues are important, body language, facial expressions and gestures. We are developing systems that are hopefully going to be able to recognise a range of socially significant interaction’

Computer mentor
The study is not just looking at human-robot interaction, but at how we react with a graphics avatar. ‘How do you interact with something without a physical embodiment?’ asks McOwan. ‘We are looking at scenarios for that, such as developing a kind of mentor for students studying for exams.’

They are also looking at how to transfer the same ‘personality’ from technology to technology. ‘It’s something we are calling “migration”, if you move the robot into a computer graphic, or into a graphic on a PDA, you try to ensure for the human user that it is the same ‘friend’ they are interacting with.’