Biologically Inspired Multimodal Integration: Interferences in a Human-Robot Interaction Game

This paper presents a biologically inspired approach to multimodal integration and decision-making in the context of human-robot interactions. More specifically, we address the principle of ideomotor compatibility by which observing the movements of others influences the quality of one's own performance. This fundamental human ability is likely to be linked with human imitation abilities, social interactions, the transfer of manual skills, and probably to mind reading. We present a robotic control model capable of integrating multimodal information, decision making, and replicating a stimulus-response compatibility task, originally designed to measure the effect of ideomotor compatibility on human behavior. The model consists of a neural network based on the dynamic field approach, which is known for its natural ability for stimulus enhancement as well as cooperative and competitive interactions within and across sensorimotor representations. Finally, we discuss how the capacity for ideomotor facilitation can provide the robot with human-like behavior, but at the expense of several disadvantages, such as hesitation and even mistakes

Study of the Importance of Adequacy to Robot Verbal and Non Verbal Communication in Human-Robot interaction

The Robadom project aims at creating a homecare robot that help and assist people in their daily life, either in doing task for the human or in managing day organization. A robot could have this kind of role only if it is accepted by humans. Before thinking about the robot appearance, we decided to evaluate the importance of the relation between verbal and nonverbal communication during a human-robot interaction in order to determine the situation where the robot is accepted. We realized two experiments in order to study this acceptance. The first experiment studied the importance of having robot nonverbal behavior in relation of its verbal behavior. The second experiment studied the capability of a robot to provide a correct human-robot interaction.Comment: the 43rd Symposium on Robotics - ISR 2012, Taipei : Taiwan, Province Of China (2012

Identification and distance estimation of users and objects by means of electronic beacons in social robotics

Social robots are intended to coexist and to communicate with humans in a natural way. This requires these robots to be able to identify people (and objects) around them to use that information during human-robot dialogs. In this work we present how electronic beacons can benefit the interactions between humans and social robots. In particular, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy beacons are presented as the most suitable option, among the up-to-date available technologies. In order to show the advantages of the system during human-robot interaction, first, we present the integration of the information provided by these devices in the robot’s dialog system; and after, a hidden toy hunt game is described as a case study of a scenario where electronic beacons ease the interaction between humans and a social robot.The research leading to these results has received funding from the projects: Development of social robots to help seniors with cognitive impairment (ROBSEN), funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (DPI2014-57684-R); and RoboCity2030-III-CM, funded by Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU (S2013/MIT-2748)

Methodological Flaws in Cognitive Animat Research

In the field of convergence between research in autonomous machine construction and biological systems understanding it is usually argued that building robots for research on auton- omy by replicating extant animals is a valuable strategy for engineering autonomous intelligent systems. In this paper we will address the very issue of animat construction, the ratio- nale behind this, their current implementations and the value they are producing. It will be shown that current activity, as it is done today, is deeply flawed and useless as research in the science and engineering of autonomy

3D multi-robot patrolling with a two-level coordination strategy

Teams of UGVs patrolling harsh and complex 3D environments can experience interference and spatial conflicts with one another. Neglecting the occurrence of these events crucially hinders both soundness and reliability of a patrolling process. This work presents a distributed multi-robot patrolling technique, which uses a two-level coordination strategy to minimize and explicitly manage the occurrence of conflicts and interference. The first level guides the agents to single out exclusive target nodes on a topological map. This target selection relies on a shared idleness representation and a coordination mechanism preventing topological conflicts. The second level hosts coordination strategies based on a metric representation of space and is supported by a 3D SLAM system. Here, each robot path planner negotiates spatial conflicts by applying a multi-robot traversability function. Continuous interactions between these two levels ensure coordination and conflicts resolution. Both simulations and real-world experiments are presented to validate the performances of the proposed patrolling strategy in 3D environments. Results show this is a promising solution for managing spatial conflicts and preventing deadlocks

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion