‘The distinction between us and robots is going to disappear.’
Rodney Brooks, Robot: The Future of Flesh and Machines, 2002.
The Crag – Creation of Reality Group, directed by Luis de Miranda – is co-developing The Anthrobotics Interdisciplinary Network at the University of Edinburgh along with the school of informatics, with Ram Ramamoorthy and Michael Rovatsos, among others. This is a platform of cross-disciplinary research and collaboration on the relation between humans, robots and intelligent systems. Anthrobotics is a hypothetical methodology: a move away from ethics as main central focus towards social policy concerns, a move away from the idea that social automata are a radically new phenomenon towards a histosophy of social machines, and a move away from methodological individualism to look at the relationship human/robot in terms of relationship between collectives.
Read the Robohub Interview here
Read the Futurism.com interview here
Read We, the Anthrobot, our manifesto
Expected Impact:
– Develop a holistic approach and new perspectives in robotics and AI research and innovation.
– Strengthen collaboration between diverse robotics, AI and humanities/social sciences research clusters;
– Gain a higher level of UK and European involvement in social robotics policy and standard-making;
– Clearer understanding by the community and non-technical experts of the impact of robotics and AI technology through two-way engagement, which helps to better inform related strategy and policy decision-making; significant and measurable evolution in the public awareness and understanding of robots;
– Increase public interest and participation in robotics technology and societal policy issues.
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The project manager is Luis de Miranda, director of the CRAG, and author of the book L’art d’être libres au temps des automates (Freedom in the Era of Automata) Other founding members include:
– Michael Rovatsos, Senior Lecturer at the School of Informatics, and Director of the Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications. Recent papers:
– Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Reader at the School of informatics, Executive Comitte Member of the Edinburgh Center for Robotics.
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