British scientists have won a €1 million stg. grant to find out if a robot can safely be employed to stir soup in a kitchen.
The project called Co-operative Human Robot Interaction Systems (CHRIS) and based at the Bristol Robotics Lab (BRL) has been funded by the European Commission.
A lab spokeswoman said today the project will specifically look at the problems of a human and a robot working together in the same space, for example in a kitchen where the service robot is performing a task such as stirring soup, while the human adds cream.
Not only does the robot need to know that the goal is to make soup but it also needs to know how hard to stir the soup, how to react to the human and when to stop stirring when instructed according to Professor Chris Melhuish of the BRL.
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