Helen Hastie on the future of human-robot relations
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally to conversational cues and even explain their work?
Making this relationship a reality is a focus for Helen Hastie, Professor of Human-Robot Interaction and Head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Helen’s career has taken her from developing early dialogue systems - the ancestors of today’s generative AI - to working on sophisticated bots that can serve coffee with a side of small-talk, teach struggling kids with empathy, or provide calm and confident decisions as triage nurses. She’s also driven some of the UK’s flagship robotics initiatives, including as co-lead of the National Robotarium.
Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili - who reveals he was once told off for rudeness by an early chatbot - Helen explains her hopes for useful, reliable and ultimately trustworthy robots; machines that aren’t just in our world but a welcome part of it.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production
Transcript
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| 0:47.7 | Hello, let's start with a quick test. If I ask you to cunder up an image of a useful and reliable robot helper, what springs to mind? |
| 0:58.2 | Some of you might be thinking of those industrial robotic arms used in car assembly lines, |
| 1:03.4 | or perhaps an explosive ordnance bot, the remote-controlled devices used by bomb disposal teams. |
| 1:10.0 | Others might be focusing on fictional robots, |
| 1:12.7 | R2D2 from Star Wars perhaps, not just a tool, but a machine that can actually interact with humans, |
| 1:19.4 | one that is communicative, responsive and even trustworthy. In fact, those sorts of relationships |
| 1:25.5 | are the focus for today's guest. Helen Hasty is a professor of |
| 1:29.1 | human-robot interaction and head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Her |
| 1:34.7 | mission is to develop robots that don't just think but connect, systems that will competently perform |
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