Robots in Retail: Bottom-up approach to responsible innovation
A consortium of Danish universities and companies has successfully completed a project called ‘Understanding the Implications of Robots Working in Everyday Public Interaction in Retail’. The project was part of the Collaboration Projects scheme funded by Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science (UFS) via Odense Robotics and carried out between August 2023-July 2024 by Aarhus University, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Coalescent Mobile Robots (CMR), Capra Robotics and RGC Management.
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The companies and researchers worked together to better understand what the main challenges and requirements for a successful human-robot interaction and implementation of mobile robots into retail environments and potentially other public spaces were. The project was based on two real-world application scenarios involving robots operating at Bilka – a hypermarket in Odense, and Rosengaard Centret – a shopping mall in Odense. It was particularly the pioneering solutions implemented and tested by Coalescent Mobile Robots at Bilka, namely the robot Serena, to provide rich first-hand insights into what it means to bring robots into busy public environments in practice.
The interdisciplinary collaboration resulted in creating strong collaborative synergies channeled into an InnovationFund proposal, addressing challenges explored in the collaboration project, and a significant potential for further developments and societal impact. Also, it has led to setting a basis for a novel approach ‘bottom-up responsible innovation’ that was presented at the Robophilosophy Conference 2024 and, following the peer review process, accepted for publication.
The main conclusion of the project
Let the robotic innovation grow organically and trust the cultural learning competencies of the people involved.
For further information please contact
- Karolina Zawieska , Aarhus University: k.zawieska@cas.au.dk
- Leon Bodenhagen, SDU Robotics: lebo@mmmi.sdu.dk
The project has been funded by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science through Innovationskraftbevillingen 2021-2024.