Personality Perception of Robot Avatar Teleoperators in Solo and Dyadic Tasks

Humanoid robot avatars are a potential new telecommunication tool, whereby a user is remotely represented by a robot that replicates their arm, head, and possible face movements. They have been shown to have a number of benefits over more traditional media such as phones or video calls. However, using a teleoperated humanoid as a communication medium inherently changes the appearance of the operator, and appearance-based stereotypes are used in interpersonal judgments (whether consciously or unconsciously). One such judgment that plays a key role in how people interact is personality. Hence, we have been motivated to investigate if and how using a robot avatar alters the perceived personality of teleoperators. To do so, we carried out two studies where participants performed 3 communication tasks, solo in study one and dyadic in study two, and were recorded on video both with and without robot mediation. Judges recruited using online crowdsourcing services then made personality judgments of the participants in the video clips. We observed that judges were able to make internally consistent trait judgments in both communication conditions. However, judge agreement was affected by robot mediation, although which traits were affected was highly task dependent. Our most important finding was that in dyadic tasks personality trait perception was shifted to incorporate cues relating to the robot’s appearance when it was used to communicate. Our findings have important implications for telepresence robot design and personality expression in autonomous robots.This work was funded by the EPSRC under its IDEAS Factory Sandpits call on Digital Personhood (Grant Ref: EP/L00416X/1)

Direct interaction with large displays through monocular computer vision

Large displays are everywhere, and have been shown to provide higher productivity gain and user satisfaction compared to traditional desktop monitors. The computer mouse remains the most common input tool for users to interact with these larger displays. Much effort has been made on making this interaction more natural and more intuitive for the user. The use of computer vision for this purpose has been well researched as it provides freedom and mobility to the user and allows them to interact at a distance. Interaction that relies on monocular computer vision, however, has not been well researched, particularly when used for depth information recovery. This thesis aims to investigate the feasibility of using monocular computer vision to allow bare-hand interaction with large display systems from a distance. By taking into account the location of the user and the interaction area available, a dynamic virtual touchscreen can be estimated between the display and the user. In the process, theories and techniques that make interaction with computer display as easy as pointing to real world objects is explored. Studies were conducted to investigate the way human point at objects naturally with their hand and to examine the inadequacy in existing pointing systems. Models that underpin the pointing strategy used in many of the previous interactive systems were formalized. A proof-of-concept prototype is built and evaluated from various user studies. Results from this thesis suggested that it is possible to allow natural user interaction with large displays using low-cost monocular computer vision. Furthermore, models developed and lessons learnt in this research can assist designers to develop more accurate and natural interactive systems that make use of human’s natural pointing behaviours

Investigating the Impact of Co-located and Distributed Collaboration Using Multi-touch Tables

With the intention to study the role of new interfaces in multi-user applications, multi-touch tabletops are investigated to examine if they effectively aid their users in working together synchronously. Multi-player games are selected as a case of collaborative work. Early studies of distributed multi-touch tabletops did not cover the HCI related aspects associated with multi-player games, especially in distributed configuration. The performance, collaboration, and usability aspects of HCI are studied in this research. A simple multi-player maze game has been designed and implemented over two connected and physically separated multi-touch tabletops. The aim of this work is to investigate the effects of distribution on players performance, collaboration, and usability of multi-player games over multi-touch tabletops, compared to playing in a co-located condition. Groups of participants have been randomly selected and assigned to play the game in pairs under two conditions: co-located where two players are playing the game on the same table, and distributed where they are playing the game but on separate tables. The collected data is statistically analysed to test for differences between the two conditions, as well as the differences of the strength of the correlation between the underlying factors. The results indicate that, in general, the differences are not significant for such type of applications if a simple and efficient communication mechanism is provided for the players in the distributed condition. Players expressed almost the same level of usability engagement and enjoyment for the two conditions. This may have a strong impact on the HCI aspects when designing such type of applications on the future

Bridging Private and Shared Interaction Surfaces in Collocated Groupware

Multi-display environments (such as the pairing of a digital tabletop computer with a set of handheld tablet computers) can support collocated interaction in groups by providing individuals with private workspaces that can be used alongside shared interaction surfaces. However, such a configuration necessitates the inclusion of intuitive and seamless interactions to move digital objects between displays. While existing research has suggested numerous methods to bridge devices in this manner, these methods often require highly specialized equipment and are seldom examined using real-world tasks. This thesis investigates the use of two cross-device object transfer methods as adapted for use with commonly-available hardware and applied for use in a realistic task, a familiar tabletop card game. A digital tabletop and tablet implementation of the tabletop card game Dominion is developed to support each of the two cross-device object transfer methods (as well as two different turn-taking methods to support user identification). An observational user study is then performed to examine the effect of the transfer methods on groups’ behaviour, examining player preferences and the strategies which players applied to pursue their varied goals within the game. The study reveals that players’ choices and use of the methods is shaped greatly by the way in which each player personally defines the Dominion task, not simply by the objectives outlined in its rulebook. Design considerations for the design of cross-device object transfer methods and lessons-learned for system and experimental design as applied to the gaming domain are also offered

Display and Presence Disparity in Mixed Presence Groupware

Mixed Presence Groupware (MPG) supports both colocated and distributed participants working over a shared visual workspace. It does this by connecting multiple single-display groupware workspaces together through a shared data structure. Our implementation and observations of MPG systems exposes two problems. The first is display disparity, where connecting heterogeneous tabletop and vertical displays introduces issues in how one seats people around the virtual table and how one orients work artifacts. The second is presence disparity, where a participant's perception of the presence of others is markedly different depending on whether a collaborator is co-located or remote. This is likely caused by inadequate consequential communication between remote participants, which in turn disrupts group collaborative and communication dynamics. To mitigate display and presence disparity problems, we determine virtual seating positions and replace conventional telepointers with digital arm shadows that extend from a person's side of the table to their pointer location

Robot mediated communication: Enhancing tele-presence using an avatar

In the past few years there has been a lot of development in the field of tele-presence. These developments have caused tele-presence technologies to become easily accessible and also for the experience to be enhanced. Since tele-presence is not only used for tele-presence assisted group meetings but also in some forms of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), these activities have also been facilitated. One of the lingering issues has to do with how to properly transmit presence of non-co-located members to the rest of the group. Using current commercially available tele-presence technology it is possible to exhibit a limited level of social presence but no physical presence. In order to cater for this lack of presence a system is implemented here using tele-operated robots as avatars for remote team members and had its efficacy tested. This testing includes both the level of presence that can be exhibited by robot avatars but also how the efficacy of these robots for this task changes depending on the morphology of the robot. Using different types of robots, a humanoid robot and an industrial robot arm, as tele-presence avatars, it is found that the humanoid robot using an appropriate control system is better at exhibiting a social presence. Further, when compared to a voice only scenario, both robots proved significantly better than with only voice in terms of both cooperative task solving and social presence. These results indicate that using an appropriate control system, a humanoid robot can be better than an industrial robot in these types of tasks and the validity of aiming for a humanoid design behaving in a human-like way in order to emulate social interactions that are closer to human norms. This has implications for the design of autonomous socially interactive robot systems