Constraining the Size Growth of the Task Space with Socially Guided Intrinsic Motivation using Demonstrations

This paper presents an algorithm for learning a highly redundant inverse model in continuous and non-preset environments. Our Socially Guided Intrinsic Motivation by Demonstrations (SGIM-D) algorithm combines the advantages of both social learning and intrinsic motivation, to specialise in a wide range of skills, while lessening its dependence on the teacher. SGIM-D is evaluated on a fishing skill learning experiment.Comment: JCAI Workshop on Agents Learning Interactively from Human Teachers (ALIHT), Barcelona : Spain (2011

CUI@CHI: Mapping Grand Challenges for the Conversational User Interface Community

The aim of this workshop is twofold. First, it aims to grow critical mass in Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) research by mapping the grand challenges in designing and researching these interactions. Second, this workshop is intended to further build the CUI community with these challenges in mind, whilst also growing CUI research presence at CHI. In particular, the workshop will survey and map topics such as: interaction design for text and voice-based CUI; the interplay between engineering efforts such as in Natural language Processing (NLP) and the design of CUI; practical CUI applications (e.g. human-robot interaction, public spaces, hands-free and wearables); and social, contextual, and cultural aspects of CUI design (e.g. ethics, privacy, trust, information exploration, persuasion, well-being, or decision-making, marginalized users). By drawing from the diverse interdisciplinary expertise that defines CHI, we are proposing this workshop as a platform on which to build a community that is better equipped to tackle an emerging field that is rapidly-evolving, yet is under-studied—especially as the commercial advances seem to outpace the scholarly research in this space

Embodied Robot Models for Interdisciplinary Emotion Research

Due to their complex nature, emotions cannot be properly understood from the perspective of a single discipline. In this paper, I discuss how the use of robots as models is beneficial for interdisciplinary emotion research. Addressing this issue through the lens of my own research, I focus on a critical analysis of embodied robots models of different aspects of emotion, relate them to theories in psychology and neuroscience, and provide representative examples. I discuss concrete ways in which embodied robot models can be used to carry out interdisciplinary emotion research, assessing their contributions: as hypothetical models, and as operational models of specific emotional phenomena, of general emotion principles, and of specific emotion ``dimensions''. I conclude by discussing the advantages of using embodied robot models over other models.Peer reviewe

A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings