Humanoid Robots Advance with BioID’s Participation in New ‘FORSocialRobots’ Research Project

Nuremberg – July 28th, 2023
Humanoid robots that support humans in their daily lives and communicate with them empathically, humorously, and competently are the epitome of many visions for the future.
These robots are seen as the embodiment of future technology. BioID’s participation in the FORSocialRobots Research Project is set to drive significant advancements in the initiative.
Although social robots are not yet widely used, they hold great potential for improving our lives.

The practical applications of robots in everyday situations are currently quite restricted. However, thanks to the grant of approximately 1,980,000 euros by the Board of Trustees of the Bavarian Research Foundation to the research network named ‘FORSocialRobots’, the study aimed at enhancing the social capabilities of automated systems and robots can finally get started. The project is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2024, and is scheduled to run for three years.

Advance Research of Humanoid Robots in BioID x ‘FORSocialRobots’ Project

The aim of the new joint project ‘FORSocialRobots’ is to extract and structure social skills and to create a way to transfer them to different robots in different scenarios. Furthermore, social skills are to be simulated in the virtual world to accelerate the development of social robots. This will be achieved by an in-depth analysis of six significant areas of society, including monitoring, logistics, production, service, retirement homes, and dementia centers. Also analyzed will be five scientific subprojects, which are architecture of social capabilities, social situational communication, socially adaptive and proactive interaction, simulation and validation of socially cognitive robots in the digital twin, and human-robot interaction in the work context.

The effectiveness of the findings will be critically evaluated to determine their efficacy.

‘FORSocialRobots’ and ‘FORNeRo’ have been unveiled as the first recipients of funding from the June 2022 ‘Call for Funding’ among nine technology projects totaling around 8.5 million euros.
The two research consortia, ‘FORSocialRobots’ and ‘FORNeRo’, are competing to explore different aspects of robotics.

BioID is involved in the FORSocialRobots initiative, utilizing its proprietary liveness detection technology to enhance the social capabilities of robots and create a long-lasting impact on the industry. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is leveraged through powerful Deep Neural Networks and enables automated systems and robots to recognize if a real person is presented to them or a recaptured version of a person.
This results in the humanoid robot knowing and assisting only real persons who are in need of their services and assistance.

In order to achieve this goal, the initial stage involves extracting the necessary social abilities that exist between humans and machines. These abilities will then be organized into a machine-readable ontology, and a modern software architecture utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools will be created to map them.

The exploration will deliver comprehensive details on social capabilities involving situational and empathic communication and adaptive and proactive interaction. These “micro-services” shall be readily accessible for integration into any technical system.

In order to test the functionality and acceptance of social competencies during the development phase, they can be simulated in a virtual environment. This approach allows for a safe evaluation with selected test subjects and can ultimately expedite the development of social robots.

The project consortium consists of research institutes, companies, and users who together have the know-how to research the robot physically and software-wise, to realize use cases, and to take ELSI factors (ethical, legal, and social issues) into account.

You can find more information about our project “FORSocialRobots” in these German press releases:
press release Bavarian Research Foundation
press release FAPS FORSocialRobots

CONTACT

BioID
Alexandra Atsüren
+49 911 9999 898 0
press@bioid.com