Step into my lab: a ‘Culture Night’ for academics

Robots are readying themselves for a move into our homes. They’ve played an important role in industrial manufacturing for years, but as populations grow, robots are going to start taking over domestic tasks for people with mobility issues and problems with mental-health capacity.

That’s according to Conor McGinn, assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Manufacturing and Engineering, at Trinity College Dublin, who will present a showcase on developments in the field of robotics at Discover Research Dublin at the college next Friday.

McGinn and his team are looking beyond that to November, when they will be pitted against international competition in Portugal for a sort of Good Housekeeping version of Robot Wars, where robots will have to complete a range of tasks in a purpose-built luxury apartment.

The competition is designed with the elderly in mind and was set up to promote robots doing useful jobs in the home. These will involve functional tasks, such as speech recognition and navigation, as well as cognitive tests: if a doorbell rings, the robot needs to know to answer it without being told.

McGinn and his team will unveil a new robot at the event, and he claims they’ve figured out a “very clever” way to link its artificial intelligence system with its mobility motors. “It’s so complicated: most guys only use one computer, and we’re looking at being able to use something like seven.”

On top of that, literally, is a new head they’ve been working on, which will have a camera for eyes. “We’re going to see if people can tell when there’s a person controlling where it looks and how it reacts or when it’s the robot controlling itself.”

With plans to have the new model testing with humans by Christmas, it will give McGinn’s team a chance to see where they stand internationally. “Some of the best robots in the world are going to be there,” he says. “Until now there’s been no way to compare robots doing these sorts of things.”

McGinn’s presentation on Friday will be one of more than 60 displays and events taking place during Discover Research Dublin. The event, which is like a Culture Night for academic research, is a Europe-wide project funded by the EU.

Francesca La Morgia, assistant professor in clinical speech and language studies at TCD, will focus on the linguistic ability of toddlers, specifically the advantages and challenges of raising children bilingually.

Her talk will be aimed at foreign parents worried about their children’s linguistic development. “Sometimes parents want to know would it be better for them to use their home language [when speaking to their children] or would it be better if they switched to English,” La Morgia says.

The answer is usually to stick with the native language because children pick up perfectly good English on their own.

“If a very young baby is raised in a family where both parents have Polish and do not interact with English speakers, then this child will develop Polish a lot more in the early years but English will come. As soon as they start going to childcare or nursery or school, then English comes in.”

In fact, it’s usually more difficult for foreign parents to keep children speaking their native language. Frequently, children decide for one reason or another that they’re going to speak English only.

In these situations, La Morgia usually recommends the parent perseveres with their native language. “If you continue to speak it, the language is always active. When the child is 15 and decides they’d like the language, they have it. If they stop, it’s gone.”

Another researcher at the college, Ciaran Simms, is looking forward to Korea in May 2016, when he and his team will present the findings of their analysis of extensive car-crash data from Germany.

It’s safer to get hit by a car these days than it was in the 1980s. In large part that’s down to improved vehicle design. Cars now have lower bumper structures which stop the foot tucking underneath the vehicle. Among other things, this reduces the likelihood of ligament injuries in the knee joint.

This isn’t a coincidence. For a long time people thought if a car hit a pedestrian it would be fatal and little could be done about it, but “there’s rather a lot you can do about it”, says Simms, associate professor at the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. “Cars are much safer to crash today,” he says. “In the 1970s we had upwards of 600 fatalities on our roads a year, and today we have about 200. It’s a substantial reduction in the context of a substantial increase in road usage.”

Since 2005, manufacturers selling vehicles in Europe are required to perform impact tests on the front of their cars to test how dangerous they are for pedestrians. After a pedestrian is struck, usually in the knee first, their pelvis will rotate on to the bonnet of the car and then their head will hit the windscreen. Simms and his team are analysing accident data that confirm predictions they made using computer models.

Steeper windscreens are safer, and measures to counteract the stiffness of vehicles, such as external airbags, also help.

Meet the scientists: 7,000 expected at Trinity event

Research departments at Trinity are usually off-limits to the public, but the Discover Research Dublin event on Friday will give people the opportunity to nose around the university’s faculty buildings.

The event is part of a Europe-wide, EU-funded project which takes place every year on the last Friday in September. It gives academics a chance to meet the public and show off their work.

This is the third year Trinity will host the night and organisers expect more than 7,000 people to come and view the 60-plus talks and activities taking place (about 3,000 visited the event in its first year).

Prof Cliona O’Farrelly, from the School and Biochemistry and Immunology, says it helps the college attract new students and extra funding, while encouraging researchers to apply for European grants.

Shane Bergin, a physicist who also specialises in communicating science to the public (he was behind the Dart of Physics campaign which appeared on Dart trains a couple of years ago) says giving people access to scientists and science can help break down barriers around the subject.

"Conversation is key, because if we learn things through the process of having a conversation about it that's much more powerful than just being told and accepting. I hope Discover Research Dublin will achieve that." discoverresearchdublin.com