The LIREC project (Living with Robots and Interactive Companions) is an attempt to help create interactive, emotionally intelligent, synthetic companions which are capable of long-term relationships with human users, and able to move between robot-based interaction and virtual avatar form.

The project hopes to to examine how we react to a familiar companion entity when it swaps from a robot body into a virtual form and back again - is the perception any different, or do we bond more deeply when that occurs?

The initial phase is to examine existing at-home robots to study user perception. Toy robots such as Pleo, and GlowBots are being examined. Also looked at are child like robots. Kaspar, a research robot on cognitive development being one under study.

LIREC is also looking at the manner in which humans and dogs interact, for inspiration in creating synthetic companions.

Results:

Project still underway.

Preceeding Projects:

No direct ancestor

Lead Institution:

Queen Mary, University of London

Other Institutions:

The University of Hertfordshire, UK
Heriot Watt University, UK
Otto-Friedrich - Universitat Bamberg, Germany
Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland
Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden
INESC-ID - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigacao e Desenvolvimento, Portugal

FoAM, Belgium
Cnotinfor Ltd., Portugal

Funding:

The European Commission has awarded LIREC a £6.5m grant, for a four and a half year project, concluding in late 2012.

Further Reading

LIREC main site