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

UNDERSTANDING PRE-INTERACTION RESPONSE TO HUMANOID ROBOTS: A VIEW OF COMFORT WITH ROBOTS

Despite the growing body of research exploring consumer responses to robotics, the existing comprehension of this topic locates mainly on consumers’ post-interaction reactions to robots based on technology-related and service-related views, leaving the complexity of pre-interaction uninvestigated. Motivated by a scarcity of knowledge on consumers’ reactions to service robots before their actual interaction, this study disentangles how perceived comfort with robots, as a pre-interaction perception triggered by robot anthropomorphism, penetrates customers’ implicit social decision-making and affects customer responses. By a large-scale scenario-based experiment, this study allocated a fine-grained spectrum of anthropomorphism and cartographically delineated the UV-resemblance effect of anthropomorphism degree on perceived comfort of robots and trust. Furthermore, our study reveals the role of human-robot trust in mediating the relationship between comfort with robots and usage intention. The findings provide tools for future studies into understanding pre-interaction responses from social-psychological elements that could inform the design of socially competent robots

Snapshot of Research Issues in Service Robots

A service (social) robot is defined as the Internet of Things (IoT) consisting of a physical robot body that connects to one or more Cloud services to facilitate human-machine interaction activities to enhance the functionality of a traditional robot. Many studies found that anthropomorphic designs in robots resulted in greater user engagement. Humanoid service robots usually behave like natural social interaction partners for human users, with emotional features such as speech, gestures, and eye-gaze, referring to the users’ cultural and social background. During the COVID-19 pandemic, service robots play a much more critical role in helping to safeguard people in many countries nowadays. This paper gives an overview of the research issues from technical and social-technical perspectives, especially in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), emotional expression, and cybersecurity issues, with a case study of gamification and service robots

The Impact of Social Expectation towards Robots on Human-Robot Interactions

This work is presented in defence of the thesis that it is possible to measure the social expectations and perceptions that humans have of robots in an explicit and succinct manner, and these measures are related to how humans interact with, and evaluate, these robots. There are many ways of understanding how humans may respond to, or reason about, robots as social actors, but the approach that was adopted within this body of work was one which focused on interaction-specific expectations, rather than expectations regarding the true nature of the robot. These expectations were investigated using a questionnaire-based tool, the University of Hertfordshire Social Roles Questionnaire, which was developed as part of the work presented in this thesis and tested on a sample of 400 visitors to an exhibition in the Science Gallery in Dublin. This study suggested that responses to this questionnaire loaded on two main dimensions, one which related to the degree of social equality the participants expected the interactions with the robots to have, and the other was related to the degree of control they expected to exert upon the robots within the interaction. A single item, related to pet-like interactions, loaded on both and was considered a separate, third dimension. This questionnaire was deployed as part of a proxemics study, which found that the degree to which participants accepted particular proxemics behaviours was correlated with initial social expectations of the robot. If participants expected the robot to be more of a social equal, then the participants preferred the robot to approach from the front, while participants who viewed the robot more as a tool preferred it to approach from a less obtrusive angle. The questionnaire was also deployed in two long-term studies. In the first study, which involved one interaction a week over a period of two months, participant social expectations of the robots prior to the beginning of the study, not only impacted how participants evaluated open-ended interactions with the robots throughout the two-month period, but also how they collaborated with the robots in task-oriented interactions as well. In the second study, participants interacted with the robots twice a week over a period of 6 weeks. This study replicated the findings of the previous study, in that initial expectations impacted evaluations of interactions throughout the long-term study. In addition, this study used the questionnaire to measure post-interaction perceptions of the robots in terms of social expectations. The results from these suggest that while initial social expectations of robots impact how participants evaluate the robots in terms of interactional outcomes, social perceptions of robots are more closely related to the social/affective experience of the interaction

Building Persuasive Robots with Social Power Strategies

Can social power endow social robots with the capacity to persuade? This paper represents our recent endeavor to design persuasive social robots. We have designed and run three different user studies to investigate the effectiveness of different bases of social power (inspired by French and Raven's theory) on peoples' compliance to the requests of social robots. The results show that robotic persuaders that exert social power (specifically from expert, reward, and coercion bases) demonstrate increased ability to influence humans. The first study provides a positive answer and shows that under the same circumstances, people with different personalities prefer robots using a specific social power base. In addition, social rewards can be useful in persuading individuals. The second study suggests that by employing social power, social robots are capable of persuading people objectively to select a less desirable choice among others. Finally, the third study shows that the effect of power on persuasion does not decay over time and might strengthen under specific circumstances. Moreover, exerting stronger social power does not necessarily lead to higher persuasion. Overall, we argue that the results of these studies are relevant for designing human--robot-interaction scenarios especially the ones aiming at behavioral change

Affective Communication for Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Research on affective communication for socially assistive robots has been conducted to enable physical robots to perceive, express, and respond emotionally. However, the use of affective computing in social robots has been limited, especially when social robots are designed for children, and especially those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social robots are based on cognitiveaffective models, which allow them to communicate with people following social behaviors and rules. However, interactions between a child and a robot may change or be different compared to those with an adult or when the child has an emotional deficit. In this study, we systematically reviewed studies related to computational models of emotions for children with ASD. We used the Scopus, WoS, Springer, and IEEE-Xplore databases to answer different research questions related to the definition, interaction, and design of computational models supported by theoretical psychology approaches from 1997 to 2021. Our review found 46 articles; not all the studies considered children or those with ASD.This research was funded by VRIEA-PUCV, grant number 039.358/202

Interactive robots in experimental biology

Interactive robots have the potential to revolutionise the study of social behaviour because they provide several methodological advances. In interactions with live animals, the behaviour of robots can be standardised, morphology and behaviour can be decoupled (so that different morphologies and behavioural strategies can be combined), behaviour can be manipulated in complex interaction sequences and models of behaviour can be embodied by the robot and thereby be tested. Furthermore, robots can be used as demonstrators in experiments on social learning. As we discuss here, the opportunities that robots create for new experimental approaches have far-reaching consequences for research in fields such as mate choice, cooperation, social learning, personality studies and collective behaviour. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd

Social robots for older users: a possibility to support assessment and social interventions

In the last decades, various researches in the field of robotics have created numerous opportunities for innovative support of the older population. The goal of this work was to review and highlight how social robots can help the daily life of older people, and be useful also as assessment tools. We will underline the aspects of usability and acceptability of robotic supports in the psychosocial work with older persons. The actual usability of the system influences the perception of the ease of use only when the user has no or low experience, while expert users’ perception is related to their attitude towards the robot. This finding should be more deeply analysed because it may have a strong influence on the design of future interfaces for elderly-robot interaction. Robots can play an important role to tackle the societal challenge of the growing older population. The authors report some recent studies with older users, where it was demonstrated that the acceptability of robotics during daily life activities, and also in cognitive evaluation, could be supported by social robot

Evaluating the influence of automatic attentional mechanisms in human-robot interaction

The human ability of unconsciously attending to social signals, together with other even more primitive automatic attentional processes, has been argued in the literature to play an important part in social interaction. In this paper, we will argue that the evaluation of the influence of these unconscious perceptual processes in social interaction with robots has been addressed in previous research in many cases in an ad hoc fashion, while, on the contrary, it should be tackled systematically, bridging more conventional measures from robotics with criteria stemming from ideas used in human studies in psychology, neuroscience and social sciences. We will start by establishing an experimental canvas that will limit complexity to a sustainable level, while still fostering adaptive behaviour and variability in interaction. We will then present a brief assessment of the criteria used in the HRI literature to study this particular type of experiments in order to evaluate success, followed by a suggestion of adaptation of other criteria used in human studies, which has only been sporadically and non-systematically performed in HRI research – in most cases, more as expression of future intents. We will conclude by proposing a methodology for this evaluation, to be applied in the project “Coordinated Attention for Social Interaction with Robots” sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)

Becoming in touch with industrial robots through ethnography

Touch is central to communication and social interaction. For both humans and robots touch is a mode through which they sense the world. A second wave of industrial robots is reshaping how touch operates within the labor process. Recent studies have turned their attention to the role of touch in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). While these studies have produced useful knowledge in relation to the affective capacities of robotic touch, methods remain restrictive. This paper contributes to expanding research methods for the study of robotic touch. It reports on the design of an ongoing ethnography that forms part of the InTouch project. The interdisciplinary project takes forward a socially orientated stance and is concerned with how technologies shape the semiotic and sensory dimensions of touch in the 'real world'. We contend that these dimensions are key factors in shaping how humans and robots interact, yet are currently overlooked in the HRI community. This multi-sited sensory ethnography research has been designed to explore the social implications of robotic touch within industrial settings (e.g. manufacturing and construction)