Meet Scout – the newest member of the Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour

14 September 2026

There’s a new arrival at the Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour (IDSB), and it has four legs.

Scout is a quadrupedal robot who will be working with IDSB member and Associate Professor in Data Science Dr Lukasz Piwek. The new robot has three important roles to play:

Research assistant - Scout will help Lukasz test and improve the sensors used to study how people behave and interact in physical spaces. Technology such as Scout can complement traditional approaches to observing human behaviour. Manual observation can be time-consuming and difficult to carry out consistently. By using sensors to capture information about the physical environment, Scout will give researchers another way to explore how people move, interact and behave in physical spaces.

Research subject - Scout will also provide an opportunity to explore how people respond to robots in everyday workplace environments. This also raises important considerations around privacy and data protection. If robots are sensing and collecting information about the environments and people around them, how can we make sure identifiable data is kept secure and is not shared inappropriately?

Teaching tool - Scout will also become a valuable teaching tool, giving students the opportunity to see first-hand how technologies such as sensing and machine learning can be used to understand human behaviour and the importance of doing that securely and responsibly.

Dr Lukasz Piwek said; “Scout will allow us to explore some new research territory. Previous work with sensing technology has focused on environments such as hospitality and healthcare, and Scout gives us an opportunity to look at how people respond to this kind of technology in everyday workplace environments. It also gives us the opportunity to think carefully about how we collect and handle data, including how we make sure identifiable information is kept secure and isn’t shared inappropriately.”

Scout has been funded through the IDSB, supporting the Institute’s work to explore the relationship between digital technology and human behaviour. The Institute brings together expertise across digital security and behaviour to explore not only what technology can do, but how people interact with it, how it affects the environments around us, and how it can be developed and used safely and responsibly.

Scout has only recently arrived, so this is just the beginning. Over the coming months, we’ll share updates on when Scout heads out onto campus, how people respond to him and how Lukasz’s research develops as he puts Scout through his paces.