Case study
Robotic Surgery
The aim of the use case is to create a human-agent coupled system capable of safely and effectively performing tasks in (micro)surgical environments. Specifically, the agent here refers to an exoscope on a robotic arm. Effective collaboration requires both the surgical team and the robotic agent to complement each others’ skills in a dynamic environment. For instance, the robotic microscope has to learn how best to align its position, orientation, and zoom with the activities of the members of the surgical team. This requires a mutual understanding of each upcoming surgical procedure, which is acquired during prior practice sessions, as well as dynamic adaptation during the surgery itself. The case study necessitates an inherently interdisciplinary approach, spanning topics including shared planning and reasoning, mental models and theory of mind, multimodal nonverbal behavior dynamics, situated communication interfaces, continual and lifelong learning, and collaborative ontology determination.
Case study
Education
The aim is to develop a Hybrid AI robot tutor and to evaluate this tutor in field experiments at schools with teachers and students. The robot tutor should engage and motivate, using techniques such as interactive storytelling and mental models. A key challenge is to create long term personalised interactions, using a memory and retrieval mechanisms that should adapt to students, provide explanations and give feedback in a responsible way.
Scenario
A child with learning difficulties is supported by a team in which her remedial teacher, an educational therapist and a Nao robot collaborate. Together they design a targeted learning programme, monitors progress, and provide encouragement. The robot combines expertise from the humans with its own observations, and advises on possible adjusments of the programme. Interacting with the Nao robot helps the child to stay concentrated and have fun for a longer time, for which the human experts lack time and perseverance (click here for an early example of our work).
Case study
Health - Diabetes
Diabetes is a chronic lifestyle related disease. A change of lifestyle requires intensive, personalised support involving both the patient and their social environment. A hybrid intelligent coach should help diabetes patients to adopt a healthier lifestyle while at the same time lowering the workload of healthcare professionals. A key challenge is the creation of multi-party dialogues between HI system, patient and healthcare professional that create long-term engagement. Explainability is crucial in this domain.
Case study
Scientific Assistant
The aim of the scientific assistant is to support one or more steps in the scientific method cycle: formulating research questions, analysing the literature, formulating a hypothesis, designing an experiment, analysing data, and drawing conclusions. This will require a combination of symbolic and subsymbolic AI techniques, ranging from domain ontologies to deep learning, as well as theory of mind and shared planning to support the collaboration.
Scenario
A scientist in a pharmaceutical company is testing a compound for an inhibitory effect on neurodegeneration. Overwhelmed by the enormous amounts of available online data, she turns to the lab’s virtual agent. It searches through dozens of databases, scans the literature, sends emails to authors of relevant papers avoiding scientists working for competing companies, and consults the HI system of the sister lab in China. The scientist and her HI agent analyse the findings and conclude that the compound has been investigated before, and failed to show the required inhibitory activity. Thanks to HI, this took a day, not weeks (click here for an early example of our work).
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Case study
Law
Hybrid Law aims to apply the HI principles to the legal domain to strive towards societal goals such as access to justice. Most people do not know they are in a legal predicament until it is too late, and societal barriers can prevent them from getting the legal help they need. Creating legal HI systems can improve user literacy and help ordinary citizens in legal scenarios. HI systems can also assist legal personnel by helping them tackle an ever-expanding backlog of legal documents, which currently causes severe delays in justice. These Hybrid Law systems should make the right decisions for the right reasons, and be able to explain their reasoning for justice to occur. Furthermore, they require a human-centered design where the system adapts to the user for an effective and interactive collaboration.
Scenario
We outline the case flow for two HI applications within the legal domain. These are general-use applications that can be tailored to meet the specific needs and circumstances of stakeholders. The two tools serve distinct purposes: one is designed to assist laypeople, while the other focuses on supporting legal experts in their work.
Case study
Virtual Museum Guide
The use case is about transforming museum learning through an intelligent virtual guide that fosters inclusive, immersive, and interactive cultural exploration. By leveraging multimodal interactions along with the acquisition, representation, and presentation of polyvocal knowledge, we aim to guide and accompany diverse audiences, making cultural heritage accessible, engaging and meaningful. Through the power of Hybrid Intelligence, we aim to create immersive, interactive digital environments that connect individuals to the stories and knowledge of varied cultures, ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, can experience, learn from, and contribute to the richness of global heritage.
Scenario
When a visitor, Person A, interacts with the virtual exhibition and questions the relevance of certain artworks—such as expressing disappointment about encountering Painting Y displayed near Painting X—the system responds dynamically using advanced knowledge retrieval, reasoning and adaptive techniques.