A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

Dutch Nao Team: Team description paper: Standard Platform League: German Open 2010

This is the debut of the Dutch Nao Team in the Standard Platform League. The team is a recreation of the Dutch Aibo Team, which was active in the predecessor of the SPL (2004-2006). This year participation is mainly intended to gain experience. As basis for the competition the code release of B-Human is used, with two modifications. The first modification is improved kicking behavior to accommodate the new ball. The second modification is two use both Nao camera’s (one for ball control and one for localization)

An Evaluation Schema for the Ethical Use of Autonomous Robotic Systems in Security Applications

We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems

Navigation of mobile robot in cluttered environment

Now a day’s mobile robots are widely used in many applications. Navigation of mobile robot is primary issue in robotic research field. The mobile robots to be successful, they must quickly and robustly perform useful tasks in a complex, dynamic, known and unknown surrounding. Navigation plays an important role in all mobile robots activities and tasks. Mobile robots are machines, which navigate around their environment extracting sensory information from the surrounding, and performing actions depend on the information given by the sensors. The main aim of navigation of mobile robot is to give shortest and safest path while avoiding obstacles with the help of suitable navigation technique such as Fuzzy logic. In this, we build up mobile robot then simulation and experiments are carried out in the lab. Comparison between the simulation and experimental results are done and are found to be in good

The Irresistible Animacy of Lively Artefacts

This thesis explores the perception of ‘liveliness’, or ‘animacy’, in robotically driven artefacts. This perception is irresistible, pervasive, aesthetically potent and poorly understood. I argue that the Cartesian rationalist tendencies of robotic and artificial intelligence research cultures, and associated cognitivist theories of mind, fail to acknowledge the perceptual and instinctual emotional affects that lively artefacts elicit. The thesis examines how we see artefacts with particular qualities of motion to be alive, and asks what notions of cognition can explain these perceptions. ‘Irresistible Animacy’ is our human tendency to be drawn to the primitive and strangely thrilling nature of experiencing lively artefacts. I have two research methodologies; one is interdisciplinary scholarship and the other is my artistic practice of building lively artefacts. I have developed an approach that draws on first-order cybernetics’ central animating principle of feedback-control, and second-order cybernetics’ concerns with cognition. The foundations of this approach are based upon practices of machine making to embody and perform animate behaviour, both as scientific and artistic pursuits. These have inspired embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended notions of cognition. I have developed an understanding using a theoretical framework, drawing upon literature on visual perception, behavioural and social psychology, puppetry, animation, cybernetics, robotics, interaction and aesthetics. I take as a starting point, the understanding that the visual cortex of the vertebrate eye includes active feature-detection for animate agents in our environment, and actively constructs the causal and social structure of this environment. I suggest perceptual ambiguity is at the centre of all animated art forms. Ambiguity encourages natural curiosity and interactive participation. It also elicits complex visceral qualities of presence and the uncanny. In the making of my own Lively Artefacts, I demonstrate a series of different approaches including the use of abstraction, artificial life algorithms, and reactive techniques

Synesthetic Sensor Fusion via a Cross-Wired Artificial Neural Network.

The purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to examine the behavior of two artificial neural networks cross-wired based on the synesthesia cross-wiring hypothesis. Motivation for the study was derived from the study of psychology, robotics, and artificial neural networks, with perceivable application in the domain of mobile autonomous robotics where sensor fusion is a current research topic. This model of synesthetic sensor fusion does not exhibit synesthetic responses. However, it was observed that cross-wiring two independent networks does not change the functionality of the individual networks, but allows the inputs to one network to partially determine the outputs of the other network in some cases. Specifically, there are measurable influences of network A on network B, and yet network B retains its ability to respond independently