ReScaLe

RESPONSIBLE AND SCALABLE LEARNING FOR ROBOTS ASSISTING HUMANS

Summary

CAN ROBOTS LEARN THROUGH OBSERVATION? RESCALE IS RESEARCHING NEW TRAINING METHODS FOR AI-BASED ROBOTS.

AI-based robots are expected to support numerous tasks in our society, for example by assisting people in everyday life or making production processes more efficient - however, despite rapid advances in research, they are not yet part of our everyday lives. In order to make them more integrable for everyday life, ReScaLe will on the one hand work on the still existing technical challenges in the field of machine learning. On the other hand, the project will also consider social, ethical and legal aspects in order to strengthen trust in these systems.

Robots to learn tasks from humans by being demonstrated to them

Innovative machine learning methods will enable ReScaLe robots to learn tasks from humans by demonstrating them to them. To enable robots to efficiently perform the learning task, ReScaLe is developing new approaches to minimize the number of demonstrations required. The research project will introduce novel unsupervised and self-supervised deep learning methods that require only a small amount of annotated data. Further innovative methods will also support deep learning in dealing with uncertainties to further improve data efficiency.ReScaLe will simultaneously pave the way for responsible AI and robotics applications based on human rights, taking an integrated multi-level approach that considers ethical-legal normative requirements in conjunction with risks to core rights and interests, as well as user*oriented design requirements. Specially tailored participatory outreach activities accompany the project to promote community acceptance and enable bidirectional communication with researchers.

Researchers from the fields of computer science, ethics, human-machine interaction, law, mathematics and robotics are participating in ReScaLe. The project strengthens the profile field "Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence" of the University of Freiburg and will be located in the research building 'Intelligent Machine-Brain Interfacing Technology' (IMBIT).

More info available at the official project website at https://www.brainlinks-braintools.uni-freiburg.de/de/rescale/