A Proactive Approach of Robotic Framework for Making Eye Contact with Humans

Making eye contact is a most important prerequisite function of humans to initiate a conversation with others. However, it is not an easy task for a robot to make eye contact with a human if they are not facing each other initially or the human is intensely engaged his/her task. If the robot would like to start communication with a particular person, it should turn its gaze to that person and make eye contact with him/her. However, such a turning action alone is not enough to set up an eye contact phenomenon in all cases. Therefore, the robot should perform some stronger actions in some situations so that it can attract the target person before meeting his/her gaze. In this paper, we proposed a conceptual model of eye contact for social robots consisting of two phases: capturing attention and ensuring the attention capture. Evaluation experiments with human participants reveal the effectiveness of the proposed model in four viewing situations, namely, central field of view, near peripheral field of view, far peripheral field of view, and out of field of view

Development of duplex eye contact framework for human-robot inter communication

Funding Information: This work was supported in part by the National Research Foundation of Korea-Grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science and ICT) under Grant NRF 2020R1A2B5B02002478, in part by the Sejong University through its Faculty Research Program, and in part by the Directorate of Research and Extension (DRE), Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Teaching robot’s proactive behavior using human assistance

The final publication is available at link.springer.comIn recent years, there has been a growing interest in enabling autonomous social robots to interact with people. However, many questions remain unresolved regarding the social capabilities robots should have in order to perform this interaction in an ever more natural manner. In this paper, we tackle this problem through a comprehensive study of various topics involved in the interaction between a mobile robot and untrained human volunteers for a variety of tasks. In particular, this work presents a framework that enables the robot to proactively approach people and establish friendly interaction. To this end, we provided the robot with several perception and action skills, such as that of detecting people, planning an approach and communicating the intention to initiate a conversation while expressing an emotional status.We also introduce an interactive learning system that uses the person’s volunteered assistance to incrementally improve the robot’s perception skills. As a proof of concept, we focus on the particular task of online face learning and recognition. We conducted real-life experiments with our Tibi robot to validate the framework during the interaction process. Within this study, several surveys and user studies have been realized to reveal the social acceptability of the robot within the context of different tasks.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Recent Advancements in Augmented Reality for Robotic Applications: A Survey

Robots are expanding from industrial applications to daily life, in areas such as medical robotics, rehabilitative robotics, social robotics, and mobile/aerial robotics systems. In recent years, augmented reality (AR) has been integrated into many robotic applications, including medical, industrial, human–robot interactions, and collaboration scenarios. In this work, AR for both medical and industrial robot applications is reviewed and summarized. For medical robot applications, we investigated the integration of AR in (1) preoperative and surgical task planning; (2) image-guided robotic surgery; (3) surgical training and simulation; and (4) telesurgery. AR for industrial scenarios is reviewed in (1) human–robot interactions and collaborations; (2) path planning and task allocation; (3) training and simulation; and (4) teleoperation control/assistance. In addition, the limitations and challenges are discussed. Overall, this article serves as a valuable resource for working in the field of AR and robotic research, offering insights into the recent state of the art and prospects for improvement

Occupational health and safety in a robot blended workplace

Abban már nincs semmi újdonság, hogy a modern munkahelyeken robotokat használnak és ezek a munkavállalókkal együtt végzik a munkát. Míg azonban ezeket a gépeket eleinte csak egyszerű feladatok ellátására építették, mára a mesterséges intelligencia már oda jutott, hogy a robotok bizonyos értelemben „gondolkodni” is tudnak. Ebben a cikkben ismertetjük a robotok és intelligens gépek jelenlegi használatát, felvázoljuk a robotika széles körű alkalmazásának jövőképét és azt, hogy mindez milyen következményekkel jár a munkahelyi biztonságra és egészségvédelemre. Szisztematikusan mutatjuk be a robotok három fő generációját (ipari robotok, szolgáltató robotok és kollaboratív robotok), a velük kapcsolatos specifikus munkahelyi kockázatokat és a jelenleg ismert munkabiztonsági standardokat. A történelmi tapasztalatok azt mutatják, hogy az új technológiák az új előnyök mellett új költségekkel, lehetőségekkel és veszélyekkel is járnak. A robotok új kihívásokat jelentenek a munkavédelem és a munkaügyi egészség modernizálása számára. Utalás történik arra, hogy a világ számos helyén folynak kísérletek a robotok és az emberek közötti munkavégzés biztonsági standardjainak a kidolgozására. Válaszolva a bevezetésben feltett kérdésre, kijelenthető, hogy a robotok alkalmazása – középtávon biztosan – nemhogy megszüntetné a munkavédelem és a munkaegészségügy iránti igényt, sőt egyre újabb megoldandó feladatok elé állítja