The ORCHID Project
As computation increasingly pervades the world around us, it will profoundly change the ways in which we work with computers. Rather than issuing instructions to passive machines, humans and software agents will continually and flexibly establish a range of collaborative relationships with one another, forming human-agent collectives (HACs) to meet their individual and collective goals.
This vision of people and computational agents operating at a global scale offers tremendous potential and, if realised correctly, will help us meet the key societal challenges of sustainability, inclusion, and safety that are core to our future.
To fully realise this vision, we require a principled science that allows us to reason about the computational and human aspects of these systems. Delivering this science is the core research objective of ORCHID. Specifically, we seek to establish the science that is needed to understand, build and apply HACs that symbiotically interleave human and computer systems to an unprecedented degree. With multi-disciplinary expertise in the areas of artificial intelligence, agent-based computing, machine learning, decentralised information systems, crowd sourcing, participatory systems, and ubiquitous computing, the ORCHID team aims to drive the science of HACs to real-world applications in the critical domains of the smart grid, disaster response and citizen science.
Highlighted Publications
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Latest News
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May 17
Parcels find their way to you via the crowd
A new delivery concept uses the location of random strangers to TwedEx parcels directly to you – wherever you are JANE yawns and climbs the stairs from the subway at 145th Street, New York. She’s almost home. A stranger rises from a bench as she approaches, catching her eye. “Jane Murphy?” She nods. “Here’s your [...] -
May 15
Southampton researchers develop new tool to provide radiation monitoring in Japan
A team of researchers from the University of Southampton have designed a new tool to intelligently combine nuclear radioactivity data in Japan. The technology harnesses the power of crowdsourced radiation data; an innovative resource which became available after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The researchers have developed the Japan Nuclear Crowd Map (JNCM): a web [...] -
May 02
First standard for provenance of information on the Web published
PROV, a worldwide specification for provenance of information on the Web, has reached a key milestone, with the publication of a standard thanks to the work of an international group led by a University of Southampton professor, Luc Moreau. Professor Moreau says: “The W3C Provenance working group has worked very hard to develop a standard [...]
Doctoral Training Programme
Offering fully funded scholarships to eligible applicants interested in building the next generation of intelligent information systems.
Learn more »Disaster response
We are developing systems that allow first responders, unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, and software agents to work effectively together.
Learn more about Disaster response »Smart Grid
We are developing novel algorithms and interfaces to optimise energy consumption and coordinate consumers and producers in the smart grid.
Learn more about Smart Grid »Citizen Science
We are developing approaches that make full use of the skills, preferences and capabilities of citizen scientists.
Learn more about Citizen Science »