When Robots Know When to Help: Calibrated Confidence for Safer Assistive Tech

Kari Jaaskelainen

10 Jan 2026 — 1 min read

When robots know when to help

Assistive robots shouldn't guess. They need to know what you plan to do, and how sure they are, before stepping in.

Researchers Johannes A. Gaus, Winfried Ilg, and Daniel Haeufle show that raw AI "confidence" can be misleading. Their fix: calibrate the model's probabilities so that, for example, 80% confidence really means it's right about 8 out of 10 times.

Calibration cut miscalibration by about 10x without hurting accuracy.
An easy ACT/HOLD rule uses this calibrated confidence: act when reliability is high, hold back when it's not.
The confidence threshold becomes a tunable safety knob for daily-living assistance.

Bottom line: more predictable, verifiable help from devices like smart prosthetics or mobility aids - support when it's safe, pause when it's not.

Read the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04982v1

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04982v1

Register: https://www.AiFeta.com

#AssistiveRobotics #AI #Safety #HumanRobotInteraction #Calibration #Robotics #HealthcareTech

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When robots know when to help

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