{"id":7806,"date":"2022-04-13T14:21:05","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T12:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.isir.upmc.fr\/?post_type=isir_news&p=7806"},"modified":"2022-04-25T11:45:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T09:45:22","slug":"elsa-project-giving-robots-the-ability-to-learn-social-affordances-to-improve-interaction-with-humans","status":"publish","type":"isir_news","link":"https:\/\/www.isir.upmc.fr\/news\/elsa-project-giving-robots-the-ability-to-learn-social-affordances-to-improve-interaction-with-humans\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"ELSA PROJECT: GIVING ROBOTS THE ABILITY TO LEARN SOCIAL AFFORDANCES TO IMPROVE INTERACTION WITH HUMANS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Project ELSA – Effective learning of social affordances for human-robot interaction<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The concept of affordances is the ability of an object or an environment to evoke its use or function. It is gradually attracting the attention of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers as a way to provide artificial agents with more autonomy, by allowing them to learn for themselves which commands sent to their motors produce effects on the environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, social affordances remain largely unexplored in robotics and AI. While physical affordances represent a step towards autonomous agents that better understand their physical environment, social affordances are necessary to move towards more realistic multi-agent environments. Moreover, we know that humans accquire social affordances while learning how to interact with others. Enabling robots to do so could permit them to better interact with humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ELSA<\/strong> – Effective Learning of Social Affordances for Human-Robot Interaction<\/em> – is a Franco-Austrian research project that aims at studying the learning of social affordances in robots. The project aims at providing robots with the ability to learn social affordances for natural and efficient interaction with humans. The project is funded for 4 years, starting in January 2022, by the ANR on the French side and by the FWF agency on the Austrian side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project consortium is composed of four research institutes, two in France and two in Austria. On the French side, ISIR<\/strong> is involved with Mehdi Khamassi, Research Director, who coordinates the project, and Beno\u00eet Girard, Research Director, leader of the second work package of the project (WP2). The LAAS-CNRS<\/a>, Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems, is also a French partner. On the Austrian side, the University of Innsbruck<\/a> is a partner via the Department of Computer Science (IFI) and the Digital Science Center (DiSC). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Description of the ELSA project by Mehdi Khamassi, project coordinator.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the project involve? <\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It is about studying the learning of social affordances in robots. Affordances are opportunities for actions perceived by an agent when interacting with its environment. They are of interest to roboticists to describe the potential interactions of the robot with objects beyond simple physical properties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the ELSA<\/strong> project, we extend the notion to social affordances, which have so far barely been studied in robotics. Here, we make the following hypothesis: <\/p>\n\n\n\n