Non-Facial and Non-Verbal Affective Expression for Appearance-Constrained Robots Used in Victim Management*

Non-facial and non-verbal methods of affective expression are essential for social interaction in appearance-constrained robots such as those used in search and rescue, law enforcement, and military applications. This research identified five main methods of non-facial and non-verbal affective expression (body movements, postures, orientation, color, and sound). Based on an extensive review of literature, prescriptive design recommendations were developed for the appropriate non-facial and non-verbal affective expression methods for three proximity zones of interest (intimate, personal, and social). These design recommendations serve as guidelines to add retroactively affective expression through software with minimal or no physical modification to a robot. A large-scale, complex human-robot interaction study was conducted to validate these design recommendations using 128 participants and four methods of evaluation. The study was conducted in a high-fidelity, confined-space simulated disaster site with all robot interactions performed in the dark. Statistically significant results indicated that participants felt the robots that exhibited affective expressions were more calming, friendly, and attentive, which improved the social human-robot interactions

Integrating Affective Expressions into Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue to Improve Human-Robot Communication

Unexplained or ambiguous behaviours of rescue robots can lead to inefficient collaborations between humans and robots in robot-assisted SAR teams. To date, rescue robots do not have the ability to interact with humans on a social level, which is believed to be an essential ability that can improve the quality of interactions. This thesis research proposes to bring affective robot expressions into the SAR context to provide rescue robots social capabilities. The first experiment presented in Chapter 3 investigates whether there is consensus in mapping emotions to messages/situations in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) scenarios, where efficiency and effectiveness of interactions are crucial to success. We studied mappings between 10 specific messages, presented in two different communication styles, reflecting common situations that might happen during search and rescue missions and the emotions exhibited by robots in those situations. The data was obtained through a Mechanical Turk study with 78 participants. The findings support the feasibility of using emotions as an additional communication channel to improve multi-modal human-robot interaction for urban search and rescue robots and suggest that these mappings are robust, i.e., are not affected by the robot’s communication style. The second experiment was conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk as well with 223 participants. We used Affect Control Theory (ACT) as a method for deriving the mappings between situations and emotions (similar to the ones in the first experiment) and as an alternative method to obtaining mappings that can be adjusted for different emotion sets (Chapter 4). The results suggested that there is consistency in the choice of emotions for a robot to show in different situations between the two methods used in the first and second experiment, indicating the feasibility of using emotions as an additional modality in SAR robots. After validating the feasibility of bringing emotions to SAR context based on the findings from the first two experiments, we created affective expressions based on Evaluation, Potency and Activity (EPA) dimensions of ACT with the help of LED lights on a rescue robot called Husky. We evaluated the effect of emotions on rescue workers’ situational awareness through an online Amazon Mechanical Turk Study with 151 participants (Chapter 5). Findings indicated that participants who saw Husky with affective expressions (conveyed through lights) had better perception accuracy of the situation happening in the disaster scene than participants who saw the videos of the Husky robot without any affective lights. In other words, Husky with affective lights improved participants’ situational awareness

A comunicação não verbal no design colaborativo : um estudo de caso sobre a atividade de cocriação no desenvolvimento de produtos de linha branca

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Adriano HeemannDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Artes, Comunicação e Design, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Design. Defesa: Curitiba, 05/02/2016Inclui referências : f. 192-200Resumo: A crescente complexidade projetual e as pressões para o atendimento demúltiplos requisitos de projeto em um tempo cada vez mais reduzido aumentam arelevância do estudo da colaboração no design. A comunicação, por sua vez, é vistacomo um fator essencial para que a colaboração aconteça, além de estarrelacionada ao sucesso ou fracasso dos projetos. Nos últimos anos, muitos autoresse dedicaram ao estudo do tema, especialmente a compreensão da linguagemverbal e visual na colaboração do design. Porém, existe uma lacuna na literatura, noque concerne a comunicação não verbal que representa, aproximadamente, 65% dosignificado social de uma interação. Esta pesquisa visa, portanto, o preenchimento desta lacuna por meio da investigação do seguinte problema de pesquisa: como acomunicação não verbal pode contribuir para o design colaborativo? Para respondera questão proposta, foram realizadas revisões bibliográficas sistemáticas acerca dosseguintes temas: comunicação não verbal, comunicação no design colaborativo ecomunicação não verbal no design. Outras referências, adicionadas as revisões,abordam o tema da colaboração no design, dinâmica dos grupos e interacionismosimbólico. Essa pesquisa argumenta que o Interacionismo simbólico constitui umabase teórica adequada para a investigação do design colaborativo e sugere que aaproximação entre os estudos de psicologia social ou dinâmica dos grupos e designcolaborativo seja realizada. O referencial teórico embasa um estudo de caso únicorealizado em uma empresa que desenvolve produtos de linha branca. Neste estudoa comunicação não verbal de uma interação entre designers e usuários que temcomo objetivo o desenvolvimento um novo produto é observada. Com isso, concluiseque os gestos, as expressões faciais, a proxêmica e o olhar podem contribuircom o design colaborativo em três dimensões: (i) oferecendo subsídios para avaliaras interações; (ii) melhorando a comunicação entre designers e usuários e; (iii)fornecendo informações não verbalizadas pelos usuários que podem esclarecer ocontexto do problema de design e serem incorporados ao produto emdesenvolvimento propriamente dito.Palavras chave: Design colaborativo, comunicação, comunicação não verbal,dinâmica de grupos, interacionismo simbólico.Abstract: The increasing complexity of design projects and the need to meet multipleproject requirements in reduced time, both rise the importance of the study ofcollaboration in design. Therefore, communication is seen as an essential factor forcollaboration, being related to the success or failure of the projects. In the last years,many studies have been dedicated to this theme, especially in order to understandthe verbal and visual languages on design collaboration. However, despite the factthat there is still a literature gap, nonverbal communication represents approximately65% of the meaning of social interactions. Thus, this research aims to fill this gapinvestigating the following question: how nonverbal communication may improvecollaborative design practices? To answer this question the research proceeded to asystematic literature reviews and approached the following themes: nonverbalcommunication, communication in collaborative design and nonverbalcommunication in design. Other references, added to the reviews, touched thethemes of collaborative design, group dynamics and symbolic interactionism. Theresearch, then, argues that symbolic interactionism is an appropriate theoreticalbasis for investigating collaborative design and suggests the need for a connectionbetween this field and social psychology or group dynamics studies. This theoreticalframework underlies the empirical approach of a single case study carried in acompany of white goods. In this study, the nonverbal communication of a designerand users interaction aiming the development of a new product is observed. Thus,the research concludes that the gestures, facial expressions, proxemics and gazemay improve collaborative design in three dimensions: (i) offering subsidies to betterevaluate the interactions; (ii) enriching communication between designers and users;(iii) providing information, unspoken by users, that clarifies the context of the designproblem and may be incorporated into the product development itself.Key words: Collaborative design, communication, nonverbal communication, groupdynamics, symbolic interactionism

Proceedings of the 2021 DigitalFUTURES

This open access book is a compilation of selected papers from 2021 DigitalFUTURES—The 3rd International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication (CDRF 2021). The work focuses on novel techniques for computational design and robotic fabrication. The contents make valuable contributions to academic researchers, designers, and engineers in the industry. As well, readers encounter new ideas about understanding material intelligence in architecture