Systems overview of Ono: a DIY reproducible open source social robot

One of the major obstacles in the study of HRI (human-robot interaction) with social robots is the lack of multiple identical robots that allow testing with large user groups. Often, the price of these robots prohibits using more than a handful. A lot of the commercial robots do not possess all the necessary features to perform specific HRI experiments and due to the closed nature of the platform, large modifications are nearly impossible. While open source social robots do exist, they often use high-end components and expensive manufacturing techniques, making them unsuitable for easy reproduction. To address this problem, a new social robotics platform, named Ono, was developed. The design is based on the DIY mindset of the maker movement, using off-the-shelf components and more accessible rapid prototyping and manufacturing techniques. The modular structure of the robot makes it easy to adapt to the needs of the experiment and by embracing the open source mentality, the robot can be easily reproduced or further developed by a community of users. The low cost, open nature and DIY friendliness of the robot make it an ideal candidate for HRI studies that require a large user group

Emotional design and human-robot interaction

Recent years have shown an increase in the importance of emotions applied to the Design field - Emotional Design. In this sense, the emotional design aims to elicit (e.g., pleasure) or prevent (e.g., displeasure) determined emotions, during human product interaction. That is, the emotional design regulates the emotional interaction between the individual and the product (e.g., robot). Robot design has been a growing area whereby robots are interacting directly with humans in which emotions are essential in the interaction. Therefore, this paper aims, through a non-systematic literature review, to explore the application of emotional design, particularly on Human-Robot Interaction. Robot design features (e.g., appearance, expressing emotions and spatial distance) that affect emotional design are introduced. The chapter ends with a discussion and a conclusion.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Emotion Attribution to a Non-Humanoid Robot in Different Social Situations

In the last few years there was an increasing interest in building companion robots that interact in a socially acceptable way with humans. In order to interact in a meaningful way a robot has to convey intentionality and emotions of some sort in order to increase believability. We suggest that human-robot interaction should be considered as a specific form of inter-specific interaction and that human–animal interaction can provide a useful biological model for designing social robots. Dogs can provide a promising biological model since during the domestication process dogs were able to adapt to the human environment and to participate in complex social interactions. In this observational study we propose to design emotionally expressive behaviour of robots using the behaviour of dogs as inspiration and to test these dog-inspired robots with humans in inter-specific context. In two experiments (wizard-of-oz scenarios) we examined humans' ability to recognize two basic and a secondary emotion expressed by a robot. In Experiment 1 we provided our companion robot with two kinds of emotional behaviour (“happiness” and “fear”), and studied whether people attribute the appropriate emotion to the robot, and interact with it accordingly. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether participants tend to attribute guilty behaviour to a robot in a relevant context by examining whether relying on the robot's greeting behaviour human participants can detect if the robot transgressed a predetermined rule. Results of Experiment 1 showed that people readily attribute emotions to a social robot and interact with it in accordance with the expressed emotional behaviour. Results of Experiment 2 showed that people are able to recognize if the robot transgressed on the basis of its greeting behaviour. In summary, our findings showed that dog-inspired behaviour is a suitable medium for making people attribute emotional states to a non-humanoid robot

Development of the huggable social robot Probo: on the conceptual design and software architecture

This dissertation presents the development of a huggable social robot named Probo. Probo embodies a stuffed imaginary animal, providing a soft touch and a huggable appearance. Probo's purpose is to serve as a multidisciplinary research platform for human-robot interaction focused on children. In terms of a social robot, Probo is classified as a social interface supporting non-verbal communication. Probo's social skills are thereby limited to a reactive level. To close the gap with higher levels of interaction, an innovative system for shared control with a human operator is introduced. The software architecture de nes a modular structure to incorporate all systems into a single control center. This control center is accompanied with a 3D virtual model of Probo, simulating all motions of the robot and providing a visual feedback to the operator. Additionally, the model allows us to advance on user-testing and evaluation of newly designed systems. The robot reacts on basic input stimuli that it perceives during interaction. The input stimuli, that can be referred to as low-level perceptions, are derived from vision analysis, audio analysis, touch analysis and object identification. The stimuli will influence the attention and homeostatic system, used to de ne the robot's point of attention, current emotional state and corresponding facial expression. The recognition of these facial expressions has been evaluated in various user-studies. To evaluate the collaboration of the software components, a social interactive game for children, Probogotchi, has been developed. To facilitate interaction with children, Probo has an identity and corresponding history. Safety is ensured through Probo's soft embodiment and intrinsic safe actuation systems. To convey the illusion of life in a robotic creature, tools for the creation and management of motion sequences are put into the hands of the operator. All motions generated from operator triggered systems are combined with the motions originating from the autonomous reactive systems. The resulting motion is subsequently smoothened and transmitted to the actuation systems. With future applications to come, Probo is an ideal platform to create a friendly companion for hospitalised children

Robotic Faces: Exploring Dynamical Patterns of Social Interaction between Humans and Robots

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Informatics, 2015The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold: 1) to develop an empirically-based design for an interactive robotic face, and 2) to understand how dynamical aspects of social interaction may be leveraged to design better interactive technologies and/or further our understanding of social cognition. Understanding the role that dynamics plays in social cognition is a challenging problem. This is particularly true in studying cognition via human-robot interaction, which entails both the natural social cognition of the human and the “artificial intelligence” of the robot. Clearly, humans who are interacting with other humans (or even other mammals such as dogs) are cognizant of the social nature of the interaction – their behavior in those cases differs from that when interacting with inanimate objects such as tools. Humans (and many other animals) have some awareness of “social”, some sense of other agents. However, it is not clear how or why. Social interaction patterns vary across culture, context, and individual characteristics of the human interactor. These factors are subsumed into the larger interaction system, influencing the unfolding of the system over time (i.e. the dynamics). The overarching question is whether we can figure out how to utilize factors that influence the dynamics of the social interaction in order to imbue our interactive technologies (robots, clinical AI, decision support systems, etc.) with some "awareness of social", and potentially create more natural interaction paradigms for those technologies. In this work, we explore the above questions across a range of studies, including lab-based experiments, field observations, and placing autonomous, interactive robotic faces in public spaces. We also discuss future work, how this research relates to making sense of what a robot "sees", creating data-driven models of robot social behavior, and development of robotic face personalities