Video prototyping of dog-inspired non-verbal affective communication for an appearance constrained robot

Original article can be found at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org “This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”This paper presents results from a video human-robot interaction (VHRI) study in which participants viewed a video in which an appearance-constrained Pioneer robot used dog-inspired affective cues to communicate affinity and relationship with its owner and a guest using proxemics, body movement and orientation and camera orientation. The findings suggest that even with the limited modalities for non-verbal expression offered by a Pioneer robot, which does not have a dog-like appearance, these cues were effective for non-verbal affective communication

Artificial Companions with Personality and Social Role

Subtitle: "Expectations from Users on the Design of Groups of Companions"International audienceRobots and virtual characters are becoming increasingly used in our everyday life. Yet, they are still far from being able to maintain long-term social relationships with users. It also remains unclear what future users will expect from these so-called "artificial companions" in terms of social roles and personality. These questions are of importance because users will be surrounded with multiple artificial companions. These issues of social roles and personality among a group of companions are sledom tackled in user studies. In this paper, we describe a study in which 94 participants reported that social roles and personalities they would expect from groups of companions. We explain how the resulsts give insights for the design of future groups of companions endowed with social intelligence

Methodology and themes of human-robot interaction: a growing research field

Original article can be found at: http://www.intechweb.org/journal.php?id=3 Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Users are free to read, print, download and use the content or part of it so long as the original author(s) and source are correctly credited.This article discusses challenges of Human-Robot Interaction, which is a highly inter- and multidisciplinary area. Themes that are important in current research in this lively and growing field are identified and selected work relevant to these themes is discussed.Peer reviewe

Hospital robot at work: something alien or an intelligent colleague?

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What is a robot companion - friend, assistant or butler?

The study presented in this paper explored people's perceptions and attitudes towards the idea of a future robot companion for the home. A human-centred approach was adopted using questionnaires and human-robot interaction trials to derive data from 28 adults. Results indicated that a large proportion of participants were in favour of a robot companion and saw the potential role as being an assistant, machine or servant. Few wanted a robot companion to be a friend. Household tasks were preferred to child/animal care tasks. Humanlike communication was desirable for a robot companion, whereas humanlike behaviour and appearance were less essential. Results are discussed in relation to future research directions for the development of robot companions

Using social robots to study abnormal social development

Social robots recognize and respond to human social cues with appropriate behaviors. Social robots, and the technology used in their construction, can be unique tools in the study of abnormal social development. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by social and communicative impairments. Based on three years of integration and immersion with a clinical research group which performs more than 130 diagnostic evaluations of children for autism per year, this paper discusses how social robots will make an impact on the ways in which we diagnose, treat, and understand autism

Interactional Structure Applied to the Identification and Generation of Visual Interactive Behavior: Robots that (Usually) Follow the Rules

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Is data a toaster? Gender, sex, sexuality and robots

© 2016, Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved. This article considers the development of robotics through the lens of Gender Studies, with a particular interest in exploring relationships of intimacy involving robots. The production of sex robots has prompted some ethicists to set up the Campaign Against Sex Robots, their position articulated in Kathleen Richardson’s, 2015 paper, “The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship’: Parallels Between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots”. It is notable that these sex robots are commonly referred to as sexbots or fembots, but there is seldom reference to a malebot, though makers suggest that they can or will be made. Others (notably the makers) see this technology as no different from a vibrator or dildo and suggest that it could be a way of dealing with aberrant and criminal sexual behaviours including paedophilia. Intimacy is more than sexual practice, of course, and the ability of humans to form emotional attachments to technology is well-documented. Consider, for example, Maja Mataric’s description of the relationships formed by families with their Roomba vacuum cleaner in the Robotics Primer (2007). This led to problems for the makers for whom it was less expensive to replace a broken machine than to fix it, but who were faced with demands from families that their Roomba be repaired and returned to them. This article addresses this debate, exploring a range of contributions from ethicists, roboticists, gender theorists and others, and making specific reference to the television programs, the Scandinavian series, Real Humans (2012) and its English version, Humans (2015), as well as to Jordan Wolfson’s recent artwork, Female Figure (2014). This article is published as part of a collection on gender studies