Carme Torras – författare

A thirteen-year-old girl wakes up in a future where human emotions are extinct and people rely on personal-assistant robots to navigate daily life.

Imagine a future in which many human emotions are extinct, and “emotional masseuses” try to help people recover those lost sensations. Individuals rely on personal-assistant robots to navigate daily life. Students are taught not to think but to employ search programs. Companies protect their intellectual property by erasing the memory of their employees. And then imagine what it would feel like to be a sweet, smart thirteen-year-old girl from the twenty-first century who wakes from a cryogenically induced sleep into this strange world. This is the compelling story told by Carme Torras in this prize-winning science fiction novel. We meet Celia, brought back to life when a cure is found for her formerly terminal disease, and Lu, Celia''s adoptive mother, protective but mystified by her new daughter. There is Leo, a bioengineer, who is developing a “creativity prosthesis” to augment humans'' atrophied capacities, and the eccentric robotics mogul Dr. Craft. And there is Silvana, an emotional masseuse who reads old books to research the power of emotion. Silvana sees Celia as a living, breathing example of the emotions and feelings that are now out of reach for most people.

Torras, a prominent roboticist, weaves provocative ethical issues into her story. What kind of robots do we want when robot companions become as common as personal computers are now? Is it the responsibility of researchers to design robots that make the human mind evolve in a certain way? An appendix provides readers with a list of ethics questions raised by the book.

This book tackles all the stages and mechanisms involved in the learning of manipulation tasks by bimanual robots in unstructured settings, as it can be the task of folding clothes.

The first part describes how to build an integrated system, capable of properly handling the kinematics and dynamics of the robot along the learning process. It proposes practical enhancements to closed-loop inverse kinematics for redundant robots, a procedure to position the two arms to maximize workspace manipulability, and a dynamic model together with a disturbance observer to achieve compliant control and safe robot behavior.

In sum, the reader will find in this comprehensive exposition the relevant knowledge in different areas required to build a complete framework for model-free, compliant, coordinated robot motion learning.

This book offers an insightful exploration of the pivotal role of robots in our ever-changing society. As intelligent machines become increasingly integrated into various aspects of our lives, their impact on how we live, work, and interact becomes undeniable.

Within these pages, the book delves into the key concept of personalisation, unravelling the profound importance of tailoring robotic interactions to meet the unique needs and preferences of individuals. This exploration seeks to foster a deeper understanding of how robots can enhance our lives and potentially be a worthwhile technology to address some important societal issues. To showcase that, the book centres on a practical use case that is built upon collaboration with healthcare experts: designing personalised robots for assisting patients affected by cognitive decline.

With over 50 million people affected by dementia worldwide and an expected tripling of this number by 2050, the need for effective and accessible treatments is more pressing than ever. While there are no pharmacological treatments for this syndrome, cognitive training has shown promise for maintaining and even improving cognitive functioning among dementia patients. However, the shortage of healthcare professionals capable of delivering such therapy presents a significant challenge. This is where the potential of robots comes into play. This book delves into the potential of robotic technology designed to bridge this societal gap. By taking a therapist-oriented approach, it investigates the insights that can be gleaned from involving therapists in the entire pipeline of the design process as well as in the automatisation of the robots'' assistive behaviour. Specifically, this book aims to address personalisation from two complementary perspectives by designing robots that are both adaptable and adaptive.