Sprout: Designing Expressivity for Robots Using Fiber-Embedded Actuator

In this paper, we explore how techniques from soft robotics can help create a new form of robot expression. We present Sprout, a soft expressive robot that conveys its internal states by changing its body shape. Sprout can extend, bend, twist, and expand using fiber-embedded actuators integrated into its construction. These deformations enable Sprout to express its internal states, for example, by expanding to express anger and bending its body sideways to express curiosity. Through two user studies, we investigated how users interpreted Sprout's expressions, their perceptions of Sprout, and their expectations from future iterations of Sprout's design. We argue that the use of soft actuators opens a novel design space for robot expressions to convey internal states, emotions, and intent.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

To Affinity and Beyond: Interactive Digital Humans as a Human Computer Interface

The field of human computer interaction is increasingly exploring the use of more natural, human-like user interfaces to build intelligent agents to aid in everyday life. This is coupled with a move to people using ever more realistic avatars to represent themselves in their digital lives. As the ability to produce emotionally engaging digital human representations is only just now becoming technically possible, there is little research into how to approach such tasks. This is due to both technical complexity and operational implementation cost. This is now changing as we are at a nexus point with new approaches, faster graphics processing and enabling new technologies in machine learning and computer vision becoming available. I articulate the issues required for such digital humans to be considered successfully located on the other side of the phenomenon known as the Uncanny Valley. My results show that a complex mix of perceived and contextual aspects affect the sense making on digital humans and highlights previously undocumented effects of interactivity on the affinity. Users are willing to accept digital humans as a new form of user interface and they react to them emotionally in previously unanticipated ways. My research shows that it is possible to build an effective interactive digital human that crosses the Uncanny Valley. I directly explore what is required to build a visually realistic digital human as a primary research question and I explore if such a realistic face provides sufficient benefit to justify the challenges involved in building it. I conducted a Delphi study to inform the research approaches and then produced a complex digital human character based on these insights. This interactive and realistic digital human avatar represents a major technical undertaking involving multiple teams around the world. Finally, I explored a framework for examining the ethical implications and signpost future research areas

TouchStory: Interactive Software Designed to Assist Children with Autism to Understand Narrative

The work described in this thesis falls under the umbrella of the Aurora project (Aurora 2000). Aurora is a long-term research project which, through diverse studies, investigates the potential enhancement of the everyday lives of children with autism through the use of robots, and other interactive systems, in playful contexts. Autism is a lifelong pervasive disability which affects social interaction and communication. Importantly for this thesis, children with autism exhibit a deficit in narrative comprehension which adversely impacts their social world. The research agenda addressed by this thesis was to develop an interactive software system which promotes an understanding of narrative structure (and thus the social world) while addressing the needs of individual children. The conceptual approach developed was to break down narrative into proto-narrative components and address these components individually through the introduction of simple game-like tasks, called t-stories, presented in a human-computer interaction context. The overarching hypothesis addressed was that it is possible to help children with autism to improve their narrative skills by addressing proto-narrative components independently. An interactive software system called TouchStory was developed to present t-stories to children with autism. Following knowledge of the characteristics and preferences of this group of learners TouchStory maintained strong analogies with the concrete, physical world. The design approach was to keep things simple, introducing features only if necessary to provide a focussed and enjoyable game. TouchStory uses a touch-sensitive screen as the interaction device as it affords immediate direct manipulation of the t-story components. Socially mediated methods of requirements elicitation and software evaluation (such as focus groups, thinking aloud protocols, or intergenerational design teams) are not appropriate for use with children with autism who are not socially oriented and, in the case of children with ‗lower functioning‘ autism, may have very few words or no productive language. Therefore a new strategy was developed to achieve an inclusive, child-centred design; this was to interleave prototype development with evaluation over several long-term trials. The trials were carried out in the participants‘ own school environments to provide an ecologically valid contextual enquiry. In the first trial 18 participants were each seen individually once. The second and third trials were extended studies of 12 and 20 school visits with 12 and 6 participants respectively; each participant was seen individually on each school visit, provided that the participant was at school on the day of the visit. Evaluation was carried out on the basis of video recordings of the sessions and software logs of the on-screen interactions. Individual learning needs were addressed by adapting the set of t-stories presented to the participant on the basis of success during recent sessions. No ordering of difficulty among the proto-narrative categories could be known a priori for any individual child, and may vary from child to child. Therefore the intention was to gradually, over multiple sessions, increase the proportion of t-stories from proto-narrative categories which the individual participant found challenging, while retaining sufficient scope for the expression of skills already mastered for the session to be enjoyable and rewarding. The adaptation of the software was achieved by introducing a simple adaptive formula, evaluating it over successive long terms trials, and increasing the complexity of the formula only where necessary. Results indicate that individual participants found the interactive presentation of the simple game-like tasks engaging, even after repeated exposures on as many as 20 occasions. The adaptive formula developed in this study did, for engaged participants, focus on the proto-narrative categories which the participant needed to practice but was likely to succeed; that is it did target an effective learning zone. While little evidence was seen of learning with respect to the fully developed narratives encountered in everyday life, results strongly suggest that some participants were actively engaged in self-directed, curiosity-driven activity that functioned as learning in that they were able to transfer knowledge about the appropriateness of particular responses to previously unseen t-stories. This thesis was driven by the needs of children with autism; contributions are made in a number of cognate areas. A conceptual contribution was made by the introduction of the proto-narrative concept which was shown to identify narrative deficits in children with autism and to form a basis for learning. A contribution was made to computational adaptation by the development of a novel adaptive formula which was shown to present a challenging experience while maintaining sufficient predictability and opportunities for the expression of skills already mastered to provide a comfortable experience for children with autism. A contribution was made to software development by showing that children with autism may be included in the design process through iterative development combined with long term trials. A contribution was made to assistive technology by demonstrating that simplicity together with evaluation over long term trials engages children with autism and is a route to inclusion. We cannot expect any magic fixes for children with autism, progress will be made by small steps; this thesis forms a small but significant contribution

Animating the Ethical Demand:Exploring user dispositions in industry innovation cases through animation-based sketching

This paper addresses the challenge of attaining ethical user stances during the design process of products and services and proposes animation-based sketching as a design method, which supports elaborating and examining different ethical stances towards the user. The discussion is qualified by an empirical study of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in a Triple Helix constellation. Using a three-week long innovation workshop, UCrAc, involving 16 Danish companies and organisations and 142 students as empirical data, we discuss how animation-based sketching can explore not yet existing user dispositions, as well as create an incentive for ethical conduct in development and innovation processes. The ethical fulcrum evolves around Løgstrup's Ethical Demand and his notion of spontaneous life manifestations. From this, three ethical stances are developed; apathy, sympathy and empathy. By exploring both apathetic and sympathetic views, the ethical reflections are more nuanced as a result of actually seeing the user experience simulated through different user dispositions. Exploring the three ethical stances by visualising real use cases with the technologies simulated as already being implemented makes the life manifestations of the users in context visible. We present and discuss how animation-based sketching can support the elaboration and examination of different ethical stances towards the user in the product and service development process. Finally we present a framework for creating narrative representations of emerging technology use cases, which invite to reflection upon the ethics of the user experience.</jats:p

Ambivalent animal

The Ambivalent Animal project explores the interactions of animals, culture and technology. The project employs both artistic practice and critical theory, each in ways that inspire the other. My creative practice centers around two projects that focus on domestic pets. These projects highlight the animal's uncertain status as they explore the overlapping ontologies of animal, human and machine. They provide concrete artifacts that engage with theoretical issues of anthropocentrism, animality and alterity. My theoretical work navigates between the fields of animal studies, art and design, media and culture studies, and philosophy. My dissertation explores animality through four real and imagined animal roles: cyborg, clone, chimera and shapeshifter. Each animal role is considered in relation to three dialectics: irreducibility and procedurality, autonomy and integration, aura and abjection. These dialectics do not seek full synthesis but instead embrace the oscillations of irresolvable debates and desires. The dialectics bring into focus issues of epistemology, ontology, corporeality and subjectivity. When the four animal roles engage the three dialectics, connected yet varied themes emerge. The cyborgian animal is simultaneously liberated and regulated, assisted and restricted, integrated and isolated. The cloned animal is an emblem of renewal and loss; she is both idealized code and material flesh and finds herself caught in the battles of nature and nurture. The chimera is both rebel and conformist; his unusual juxtapositions pioneer radical corporeal transgressions but also conform to the mechanisms of global capital. And the shapeshifter explores the thrill and anxiety of an altered phenomenology; she gains new perceptions though unstable subjectivity. These roles reveal corporeal adjustments and unfamiliar subjectivities that inspire the creative practice. Both my writing and making employ an ambivalent aesthetic--an aesthetic approach that evokes two or more incompatible sensibilities. The animal's uncertain status contributes to this aesthetic: some animals enjoy remarkable care and attention, while others are routinely exploited, abused and discarded. Ambivalence acknowledges the complexity of lived experience, philosophical and political debate, and academic inquiry. My approach recognizes the light and dark of these complex ambivalences--it privileges paradox and embraces the confusion and wonder of creative research. Rather than erase, conceal or resolve ambiguity, an ambivalent aesthetic foregrounds the limits of language and representation and highlights contradiction and irresolution.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Bolter, Jay; Committee Member: DiSalvo, Carl; Committee Member: Do, Ellen; Committee Member: Prophet, Jane; Committee Member: Thacker, Eugen

Technological uncertainties and popular culture

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis is an inquiry into possibilities and problems of a sociology of translation. Beginning with a recognition that actor network theory represents a sociological account of social life premised upon on recognition of multiple ontologies, interruptions and translations, the thesis proceeds to examine problems of interpretation and representation inherent in these accounts. Tensions between sociological interpretation and social life as lived are examined by comparing representation of nonhuman agency in both an actor-network and a science fiction study of doors. The power identified in each approach varies from point making to lying. A case is made for considering fictional storytelling as sociology and hence, the sociological value of lying. It is by close examination of a fictional story that this study aims to contribute to a sociology of translation. The greater part of the thesis comprises an ethnographic study of a televised children's story. Methodological issues in ethnography are addressed and a case is made for a complicit and multi-site ethnography of story. The ethnography is represented in two particular forms. Firstly, and unusually, story is treated as a Storyworld available for ethnographic study. An actor network ethnography of this Storyworld reveals sociologically useful similarities and differences between fictional Storyworld and contemporary, social life. Secondly, story is taken as a product, a broadcast television series of six programmes. An ethnography of story production is undertaken that focuses attention on production performances, hidden storytellers and politics of authorship. Story is revealed as an unfinished project. A prominent aspect of this thesis is a recognition that fictional storytelling both liberates and constrains story possibilities. This thesis concludes that, in addressing critically important tensions in sociological representation, fictional stories should be included in sociological literature as studies in their own right

Artificial general intelligence: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI 2009, Arlington, Virginia, USA, March 6-9, 2009

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research focuses on the original and ultimate goal of AI – to create broad human-like and transhuman intelligence, by exploring all available paths, including theoretical and experimental computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, and innovative interdisciplinary methodologies. Due to the difficulty of this task, for the last few decades the majority of AI researchers have focused on what has been called narrow AI – the production of AI systems displaying intelligence regarding specific, highly constrained tasks. In recent years, however, more and more researchers have recognized the necessity – and feasibility – of returning to the original goals of the field. Increasingly, there is a call for a transition back to confronting the more difficult issues of human level intelligence and more broadly artificial general intelligence