Assistive robots and AI offer the potential to transform people's ability to manage their own health, particularly those with the greatest need and lack of adequate support.

This presentation introduces Professor Caleb-Solly’s ongoing exploration of how connecting robots with different types of sensors can provide real-time information to not only support self-management, but also facilitate timely preventative interventions. These technologies are disruptive and will lead to new models of care. To ensure that assistive robots are functionally competent, safe, and robust enough to be deployed at scale, a co-design approach was adopted in this research, including the use of a participatory approach to explore the ethical, legal, social, and organisational aspects and ensure that the use of assistive robots is indeed effective and empathetic. Recent advances in the field of assistive robotics and AI will be discussed alongside the challenges and approaches for designing assistive robots that add value to our lives. An overview of research findings from the EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Network+ project Emergence will also be introduced, an effort to create a sustainable healthcare robotics eco-system which connects researchers, industry, and healthcare providers, in order to build the infrastructure and systems to drive healthcare robotics research and development to support people living with frailty.

Speaker Biography

Praminda Caleb-Solly
Nottingham University, United Kingdom

Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, where she leads the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies research group. She holds degrees in Electronic Systems Engineering, Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering, and a PhD in Interactive Evolutionary Computation. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Head of Electronics and Computer Systems at Designability, an assistive technology SME. In 2020, she co-founded Robotics for Good CIC, a start-up to enable deployment of leading-edge intelligent robotics and smart technology solutions that seek to empower people in their everyday lives.

Professor Caleb-Solly’s academic publications cover machine learning and human-robot interaction. She also co-authored the UK-Robotics and Autonomous Systems White Paper on Robotics in Social Care: A Connected Care EcoSystem for Independent Living; and gave evidence to the UK House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee inquiry into Ageing: Science, Technology and Healthy Living. She is currently leading an EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Network, Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service, and also serves as a member of the British Standards Institute’s Technical Committees on Service Robot Safety and Ethics.

About the Presenter(s)
Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, where she leads the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies research group.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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