Developing an Affect-Aware Rear-Projected Robotic Agent

Social (or Sociable) robots are designed to interact with people in a natural and interpersonal manner. They are becoming an integrated part of our daily lives and have achieved positive outcomes in several applications such as education, health care, quality of life, entertainment, etc. Despite significant progress towards the development of realistic social robotic agents, a number of problems remain to be solved. First, current social robots either lack enough ability to have deep social interaction with human, or they are very expensive to build and maintain. Second, current social robots have yet to reach the full emotional and social capabilities necessary for rich and robust interaction with human beings. To address these problems, this dissertation presents the development of a low-cost, flexible, affect-aware rear-projected robotic agent (called ExpressionBot), that is designed to support verbal and non-verbal communication between the robot and humans, with the goal of closely modeling the dynamics of natural face-to-face communication. The developed robotic platform uses state-of-the-art character animation technologies to create an animated human face (aka avatar) that is capable of showing facial expressions, realistic eye movement, and accurate visual speech, and then project this avatar onto a face-shaped translucent mask. The mask and the projector are then rigged onto a neck mechanism that can move like a human head. Since an animation is projected onto a mask, the robotic face is highly flexible research tool, mechanically simple, and low-cost to design, build and maintain compared with mechatronic and android faces. The results of our comprehensive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) studies illustrate the benefits and values of the proposed rear-projected robotic platform over a virtual-agent with the same animation displayed on a 2D computer screen. The results indicate that ExpressionBot is well accepted by users, with some advantages in expressing facial expressions more accurately and perceiving mutual eye gaze contact. To improve social capabilities of the robot and create an expressive and empathic social agent (affect-aware) which is capable of interpreting users\u27 emotional facial expressions, we developed a new Deep Neural Networks (DNN) architecture for Facial Expression Recognition (FER). The proposed DNN was initially trained on seven well-known publicly available databases, and obtained significantly better than, or comparable to, traditional convolutional neural networks or other state-of-the-art methods in both accuracy and learning time. Since the performance of the automated FER system highly depends on its training data, and the eventual goal of the proposed robotic platform is to interact with users in an uncontrolled environment, a database of facial expressions in the wild (called AffectNet) was created by querying emotion-related keywords from different search engines. AffectNet contains more than 1M images with faces and 440,000 manually annotated images with facial expressions, valence, and arousal. Two DNNs were trained on AffectNet to classify the facial expression images and predict the value of valence and arousal. Various evaluation metrics show that our deep neural network approaches trained on AffectNet can perform better than conventional machine learning methods and available off-the-shelf FER systems. We then integrated this automated FER system into spoken dialog of our robotic platform to extend and enrich the capabilities of ExpressionBot beyond spoken dialog and create an affect-aware robotic agent that can measure and infer users\u27 affect and cognition. Three social/interaction aspects (task engagement, being empathic, and likability of the robot) are measured in an experiment with the affect-aware robotic agent. The results indicate that users rated our affect-aware agent as empathic and likable as a robot in which user\u27s affect is recognized by a human (WoZ). In summary, this dissertation presents the development and HRI studies of a perceptive, and expressive, conversational, rear-projected, life-like robotic agent (aka ExpressionBot or Ryan) that models natural face-to-face communication between human and emapthic agent. The results of our in-depth human-robot-interaction studies show that this robotic agent can serve as a model for creating the next generation of empathic social robots

Presence 2005: the eighth annual international workshop on presence, 21-23 September, 2005 University College London (Conference proceedings)

OVERVIEW (taken from the CALL FOR PAPERS) Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2005 at University College London in London, England, September 21-23, 2005. The eighth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality. The concept of presence in virtual environments has been around for at least 15 years, and the earlier idea of telepresence at least since Minsky's seminal paper in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area for the first time with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology? This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or which contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. Papers that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence are also welcome. The interest is not solely in virtual environments but in mixed reality environments. Submissions will be reviewed more rigorously than in previous conferences. High quality papers are therefore sought which make substantial contributions to the field. Approximately 20 papers will be selected for two successive special issues for the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. PRESENCE 2005 takes place in London and is hosted by University College London. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research and is supported by the European Commission's FET Presence Research Initiative through the Presencia and IST OMNIPRES projects and by University College London

Voicing Kinship with Machines: Diffractive Empathetic Listening to Synthetic Voices in Performance.

This thesis contributes to the field of voice studies by analyzing the design and production of synthetic voices in performance. The work explores six case studies, consisting of different performative experiences of the last decade (2010- 2020) that featured synthetic voice design. It focusses on the political and social impact of synthetic voices, starting from yet challenging the concepts of voice in the machine and voice of the machine. The synthetic voices explored are often playing the role of simulated artificial intelligences, therefore this thesis expands its questions towards technology at large. The analysis of the case studies follows new materialist and posthumanist premises, yet it tries to confute the patriarchal and neoliberal approach towards technological development through feminist and de-colonial approaches, developing a taxonomy for synthetic voices in performance. Chapter 1 introduces terms and explains the taxonomy. Chapter 2 looks at familiar representations of fictional AI. Chapter 3 introduces headphone theatre exploring immersive practices. Chapters 4 and 5 engage with chatbots. Chapter 6 goes in depth exploring Human and Artificial Intelligence interaction, whereas chapter 7 moves slightly towards music production and live art. The body of the thesis includes the work of Pipeline Theatre, Rimini Protokoll, Annie Dorsen, Begüm Erciyas, and Holly Herndon. The analysis is informed by posthumanism, feminism, and performance studies, starting from my own practice as sound designer and singer, looking at aesthetics of reproduction, audience engagement, and voice composition. This thesis has been designed to inspire and provoke practitioners and scholars to explore synthetic voices further, question predominant biases of binarism and acknowledge their importance in redefining technology

Robotics, AI, and Humanity

This open access book examines recent advances in how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have elicited widespread debate over their benefits and drawbacks for humanity. The emergent technologies have for instance implications within medicine and health care, employment, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and armed conflict. While there has been considerable attention devoted to robotics/AI applications in each of these domains, a fuller picture of their connections and the possible consequences for our shared humanity seems needed. This volume covers multidisciplinary research, examines current research frontiers in AI/robotics and likely impacts on societal well-being, human – robot relationships, as well as the opportunities and risks for sustainable development and peace. The attendant ethical and religious dimensions of these technologies are addressed and implications for regulatory policies on the use and future development of AI/robotics technologies are elaborated

Actor & Avatar: A Scientific and Artistic Catalog

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of "technical others" and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material

KEER2022

Avanttítol: KEER2022. DiversitiesDescripció del recurs: 25 juliol 202

EVA London 2022: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2022 Conference (EVA London 2022) is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society (CAS) and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, of which the CAS is a Specialist Group. Of course, this has been a difficult time for all conferences, with the Covid-19 pandemic. For the first time since 2019, the EVA London 2022 Conference is a physical conference. It is also an online conference, as it was in the previous two years. We continue with publishing the proceedings, both online, with open access via ScienceOpen, and also in our traditional printed form, for the second year in full colour. Over recent decades, the EVA London Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts has established itself as one of the United Kingdom’s most innovative and interdisciplinary conferences. It brings together a wide range of research domains to celebrate a diverse set of interests, with a specialised focus on visualisation. The long and short papers in this volume cover varied topics concerning the arts, visualisations, and IT, including 3D graphics, animation, artificial intelligence, creativity, culture, design, digital art, ethics, heritage, literature, museums, music, philosophy, politics, publishing, social media, and virtual reality, as well as other related interdisciplinary areas. The EVA London 2022 proceedings presents a wide spectrum of papers, demonstrations, Research Workshop contributions, other workshops, and for the seventh year, the EVA London Symposium, in the form of an opening morning session, with three invited contributors. The conference includes a number of other associated evening events including ones organised by the Computer Arts Society, Art in Flux, and EVA International. As in previous years, there are Research Workshop contributions in this volume, aimed at encouraging participation by postgraduate students and early-career artists, accepted either through the peer-review process or directly by the Research Workshop chair. The Research Workshop contributors are offered bursaries to aid participation. In particular, EVA London liaises with Art in Flux, a London-based group of digital artists. The EVA London 2022 proceedings includes long papers and short “poster” papers from international researchers inside and outside academia, from graduate artists, PhD students, industry professionals, established scholars, and senior researchers, who value EVA London for its interdisciplinary community. The conference also features keynote talks. A special feature this year is support for Ukrainian culture after its invasion earlier in the year. This publication has resulted from a selective peer review process, fitting as many excellent submissions as possible into the proceedings. This year, submission numbers were lower than previous years, mostly likely due to the pandemic and a new requirement to submit drafts of long papers for review as well as abstracts. It is still pleasing to have so many good proposals from which to select the papers that have been included. EVA London is part of a larger network of EVA international conferences. EVA events have been held in Athens, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, California, Cambridge (both UK and USA), Canberra, Copenhagen, Dallas, Delhi, Edinburgh, Florence, Gifu (Japan), Glasgow, Harvard, Jerusalem, Kiev, Laval, London, Madrid, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Paris, Prague, St Petersburg, Thessaloniki, and Warsaw. Further venues for EVA conferences are very much encouraged by the EVA community. As noted earlier, this volume is a record of accepted submissions to EVA London 2022. Associated online presentations are in general recorded and made available online after the conference