Touching a mechanical body: tactile contact with body parts of a humanoid robot is physiologically arousing

A large literature describes the use of robots’ physical bodies to support communication with people. Touch is a natural channel for physical interaction, yet it is not understood how principles of interpersonal touch might carry over to human-robot interaction. Ten students participated in an interactive anatomy lesson with a small, humanoid robot. Participants either touched or pointed to an anatomical region of the robot in each of 26 trials while their skin conductance response was measured. Touching less accessible regions of the robot (e.g., buttocks and genitals) was more physiologically arousing than touching more accessible regions (e.g., hands and feet). No differences in physiological arousal were found when just pointing to those same anatomical regions. Social robots can elicit tactile responses in human physiology, a result that signals the power of robots, and should caution mechanical and interaction designers about positive and negative effects of human-robot interactions

Exploring the design space of therapeutic robot companions for children

Robots that lend social and emotional support to their users have the potential to extend the quality of care that humans can provide. However, developing robotic aids to address symptoms of loneliness, anxiety and social isolation can be especially challenging due to factors that are complex and multi-faceted. Using a user-centered approach, a prototype therapeutic robot, TACO, was developed. The design of this robot was closely informed by a comprehensive need finding process which included a detailed literature review, ethical analysis, interviews with pediatric domain experts, and a site visit to a pediatric hospital. The prototype robot was evaluated over the course of several structured play sessions, using short interviews with children as well as a modified version of the SOFIT testing procedure. Results from early-stage testing suggest that TACO was well-liked, children found playing with it engaging and frequently exhibited affective behaviors like cuddling and stroking. These findings motivate follow-on work to further advance its design and to test its effectiveness as a therapeutic tool

New Alterities and Emerging Cultures of Social Interaction

Globalization has generated increased societal heterogeneity and awakened interest of a new kind in social cohesion and integration. But globalization is not the only contemporary process to give rise to societal hybridization. Two other such processes - much less attended to in the theoretical debate but no less problematic as regards social integration - are societal ageing and robotization. Drawing on statistical estimates, this paper begins by assessing the relevance of these new processes of hybridization. The predictions in question indicate that in the near future, everyday interaction, not just with cultural strangers and 'intelligent' machines, but also with people suffering from dementia, will be an omnipresent phenomenon, confronting our societies with types and degrees of alterity never before encountered. Whereas contact with cultural strangers is to some extent familiar (though not yet taken as standard), interaction with intelligent technological devices and dementia sufferers represent new forms of alterity for which most societies have not yet established routines of conduct. This paper gives a detailed account of a number of empirical studies showing how new forms of hybrid interaction and cooperation evolve out of repeated contact with each of the three alterities. With this groundwork in place, the paper then attempts to identify not only the ways in which routines may develop out of interaction with the three alterities but also the trends towards, and prerequisites for, the emergence of a new culture of cooperation and interaction

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications

Human/environmental relations analysis and simulation using human-centered systems methods for design and evaluation of complex habitable environments

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, February 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-75).by Simonetta Andrea Rodriguez.S.M

24/7: Drone Operations and the Distributed Work of War

How does waging war effectively fade into the background for most Americans, even as it is one of the most defining aspects of the United States’ actions and priorities, both domestically and internationally? This dissertation takes up one dimension of this question by ethnographically engaging with a particular mode of contemporary US war making that involves the deployment of drones, large and high-altitude aerial vehicles, remotely controlled from within the United States. Based on fieldwork conducted over fourteen months between 2010 and 2015 within the US with communities involved in the deployment, planning, or assessment of Air Force drone operations, a primary contribution of the dissertation is to refocus critical discourses around drones through the lens of labor and the work entailed in war. By examining the divisions of labor implicated in ongoing drone warfare, a wider set of questions and implications takes shape about the nature of contemporary American war and where different kinds of responsibilities and modes of normalization lie. The dissertation begins by arguing that the distributions of action and control that characterize drone operations are neither obvious nor necessary, but rather have taken hold only in the context of specific historical conditions of possibility. These conditions are what enable drone operations to be seen as an effective and ideal form of US military engagement, and involve interwoven developments in post-World War II military command and control theory, digital data, global information networks, and a reliance on legal frameworks that render state violence justified. The dissertation also examines the discrepancies between the imagined capacities of “unmanned” and “autonomous” drones and the current practices that constitute and maintain these technologies, which must be continually managed and constructed as effective and legitimate actors through professionalized military discourses and practices. The second half of the dissertation, more ethnographic in focus, examines how drone operations are implicated in changing conceptions of military service and military-civilian distinctions. Through an examination of the tensions and controversies that have arisen around drone pilots, the dissertation presents how Air Force pilots and commanders involved in drone operations construct and position the value of drone operations as meaningful and honorable military service. The analysis demonstrates that while officers put forward the value of their work as professional and altruistic service, at the same time, an irreconcilable tension exists because the military labor of drone operations bears increasing similarity to other forms of contemporary civilian work, characterized by the language of compensation, flexibility, and in/security. The dissertation concludes by proposing the concept of the warzone as a way to encompass all the places in which war occurs, its consequences on the battlefield, but also its sites of execution and the range of people, places, and practices that are implicated in the ongoing conduct of war. The dissertation demonstrates that the increasing deployment of drone operations is a contributing factor to the seeming invisible state of war for the majority of Americans. However, this is not necessarily because war is being conducted at a distance, as most journalists and scholars propose. Rather it is because war is being conducted, sometimes literally, in Americans’ backyards, close-by in the United States, in ways that are obfuscated or rendered merely mundane

Finding fun:characteristics of non-formal technology education in Oulu

Abstract. Education is not a singular, straight line from kindergarten to a diploma anymore for everyone. It is important to know and acknowledge the different types of out-of-school learning experiences young people can embark on in the quest for mastering a trade or just to have a good time. In this exploratory study into the world of non-formal technology education in the area of Oulu, Finland two different instances of varying levels of non-formality were investigated and how participants find fun in these situations since it is apparent that if something is non-mandatory to attend to, there should be some type of enjoyment found in the process. Tiedekoulu and Koodikärpät-kerho are clubs geared towards children and teens that have interest in playing with, making and programming technology. The observations with field notes were done in five different types of programming clubs and three different robotics ones with interviews that were conducted with 10 participants (ages 8–17), 6 parents and 6 instructors from these clubs. From the previous literature the practices and qualities of non-formal education could be defined, what fun is and how it manifests in children while they attend pedagogical situations. From this framework, the results of the analysis suggest that there are three main ways children and teenagers have fun in non-formal education: fun from the tasks they are doing, social fun by sharing with other attendants and pedagogical fun with instructors. Some attributes of the observed clubs were categorized as well along the lines of formal/non-formal/informal and the practices of the clubs were explored. Besides these findings, the limitations and implications for future research were also looked at

An Enactivist Model of Improvisational Dance

An Enactivist Model of Improvisational Danc