How humans behave and evaluate a social robot in real-environment settings

Behavioral analysis has proven to be an important method to study human-robot interaction in real-life environments providing highly relevant insights for developing new theoretical and practical models of appropriate social robot design. In this paper we describe our approach to study human-robot interaction by combining human behavioral analysis with robot evaluation results. The approach is exemplified by a case study performed with a social robot receptionist in real-life settings. Our preliminary results are encouraging, as many behavior categories could be successfully related to certain evaluation patterns. With our analysis we hope to add a useful contribution to social-robotic design concerning user modeling issues and evaluation predictions

Language-based sensing descriptors for robot object grounding

In this work, we consider an autonomous robot that is required to understand commands given by a human through natural language. Specifically, we assume that this robot is provided with an internal representation of the environment. However, such a representation is unknown to the user. In this context, we address the problem of allowing a human to understand the robot internal representation through dialog. To this end, we introduce the concept of sensing descriptors. Such representations are used by the robot to recognize unknown object properties in the given commands and warn the user about them. Additionally, we show how these properties can be learned over time by leveraging past interactions in order to enhance the grounding capabilities of the robot

Human-Machine Interfaces for Service Robotics

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Heterogeneous context-aware robots providing a personalized building tour regular paper

Existing robot guides offer a tour of a building, such as a museum or science centre, to one or more visitors. Usually the tours are predefined and lack support for dynamic interactions between the different robots. This paper focuses on the distributed collaboration of multiple heterogeneous robots (receptionist, companion) guiding visitors through a building. Semantic techniques support the formal definition of tour topics, the available content on a specific topic, and the robot and person profiles including interests and acquired knowledge. The robot guides select topics depending on their participants' interests and prior knowledge. Whenever one guide moves into the proximity of another, the guides automatically exchange participants, optimizing the amount of interesting topics. Robot collaboration is realized through the development of a software module that allows a robot to transparently include behaviours performed by other robots into its own set of behaviours. The multi-robot visitor guide application is integrated into an extended distributed heterogeneous robot team, using a receptionist robot that was not originally designed to cooperate with the guides. Evaluation of the implemented algorithms presents a 90% content coverage of relevant topics for the participants

Assessment of Society\u27s Awareness, Acceptance, and Demand for Robotic Wait Staff in Restaurant Operations

This research study consists of an assessment of participants\u27 awareness of robotics in general and also their acceptance and consumer demand for mobile, humanoid robots in the role of robotic waiters in restaurants. The study also includes the awareness and consumer demand for Microsoft Surface Computers to be potentially used as restaurant tables capable of electronic order entry, payment, and entertainment. The social impacts of such high technology upon the human occupation of waiter or waitress were also examined relative to the resistance to automation from current human wait staff. The overall results of the study were luke-warm demand for robotic waiters, strong demand for Microsoft Surface Computers, and resistance to robotic waiters among most wait staff

A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

This machine could bite: On the role of non-benign art robots

The social robot's current and anticipated roles as butler, teacher, receptionist or carer for the elderly share a fundamental anthropocentric bias: they are designed to be benign, to facilitate a transaction that aims to be both useful to and simple for the human. At a time when intelligent machines are becoming a tangible prospect, such a bias does not leave much room for exploring and understanding the ongoing changes affecting the relation between humans and our technological environment. Can art robots – robots invented by artists – offer a non-benign-by-default perspective that opens the field for a machine to express its machinic potential beyond the limits imposed by an anthropocentric and market-driven approach? The paper addresses these questions by considering and contextualising early cybernetic machines, current developments in social robotics, and art robots by the author and other artists

Guido and Am I Robot? A Case Study of Two Robotic Artworks Operating in Public Spaces

This article is a case study of two artworks that were commissioned for and exhibited in art venues in 2016 and 2017. The first artwork, Guido the Robot Guide, guided the visitors to an art-science exhibition, presenting the exhibits with a robot's perspective. Guido was the result of a collaboration between artists and engineers. The concept was an irreverent robot guide that could switch transparently from autonomous mode to operator control, allowing for seamless natural interaction. We examine how the project unfolded, its successes and limitations. Following on Guido, the lead artist developed the robotic installation Am I Robot? where the idea of a hybrid autonomous/remote-manual mode was implemented fully in a non-utilitarian machine that was exhibited in several art galleries. The article provides a concise contextualisation and details technical and design aspects as well as observations of visitors' interactions with the artworks. We evaluate the hybrid system's potential for creative robotics applications and identify directions for future research