Collaboration and competition in groups of humans and robots: effects on socioemotional and task-oriented behaviors

Advancements in technology have allowed the emergence of novel forms of social interaction. More specifically, in the last decades, the emergence of social robots has triggered a multidisciplinary effort towards achieving a better understanding of how humans and robots interact. In this dissertation, our goal was to contribute towards that effort by considering the role of goal orientation displayed by the robot (i.e. competitive vs. cooperative) and the role displayed by each player (partners and opponents). Sixty participants engaged in a typical Portuguese card-game called Sueca (two robots and two humans). Each participant played three games with each of the other players and the goal orientation was manipulated by the set of pre-validated verbal utterances displayed by the robot. The interactions were video-recorded, and we used a coding scheme based on Bales Interaction Process Analysis (1950) for small groups to analyze socioemotional positive, negative and task-oriented behaviors. A MultiLevel Modelling analysis yielded a significant effect of the role for all dimensions. Participants directed more socioemotional positive and task-oriented behaviors towards the human playing as a partner than as opponent and also interacted more with the other human in comparison to both robots. Comparing both robots, participants displayed more positive and task-oriented behaviors when interacting with robots as opponents than as partners. These results suggest the occurrence of different behavioral patterns in competitive and collaborative interactions with robots, that might be useful to inform the future development of more socially effective robots.O desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias tem proporcionado a emergência de novas formas de interação social. Mais especificamente, nas últimas décadas, o desenvolvimento de robôs sociais tem despoletado um esforço interdisciplinar orientado para o estabelecimento de uma melhor compreensão acerca da forma como pessoas e robôs interagem. Com esta dissertação, pretendemos contribuir para esse esforço considerando o efeito da orientação estratégica exibida pelo robô (i.e. competitivo vs. colaborativo) e o efeito do papel assumido pelos jogadores (parceiro ou oponente). Sessenta participantes jogaram à Sueca (dois robôs e dois humanos). Cada participante jogou três jogos em parceria com cada um dos outros jogadores e a orientação estratégica foi manipulada através do conjunto pré-validado de interações verbais exibido pelos robôs. As interações foram filmadas e analisadas usando o guião de análise sugerido por Bales (1950) que inclui interações socioemocionais negativas, positivas e relacionadas com a tarefa. Uma análise Multi-nível dos resultados revelou um efeito principal do papel para todas as dimensões. Os participantes dirigiram mais comportamentos positivos e relacionados com a tarefa para os humanos no papel de parceiros do que oponentes e interagiram mais frequentemente com o humano do que com os robôs. Os participantes também direcionaram mais interações positivas e relacionadas com a tarefa para os robôs quando estes assumiram o papel de oponentes, em comparação com quando jogaram como parceiros. Estes resultados sugerem a ocorrência de diferentes padrões comportamentais quando interagindo com robôs competitivos e colaborativos que poderão ser úteis para informar o desenvolvimento de robôs mais socialmente eficazes

Towards more humane machines: creating emotional social robots

Robots are now widely used in industrial settings, and today the world has woken up to the impact that they will have in our society. But robots have been limited to repetitive, industrial tasks. However, recent platforms are becoming more secure to operate amongst humans, and research in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is preparing robots for use in schools, public services and eventually everyone’s home. If we aim for a robot flexible enough to work around humans and decide autonomously how to act in complex situations, a notion of morality is needed for their decision making. In this chapter we argue that we can achieve some level of moral decision making in social robots if they are endowed with empathy capabilities. We then discuss how to build artificial empathy in robots, giving some concrete examples of how these implementations can guide the path to creating moral social robots in the future.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

PeppeRecycle: Improving Children’s Attitude Toward Recycling by Playing with a Social Robot

In this paper, we investigate the use of a social robot as an engaging interface of a serious game intended to make children more aware and well disposed towards waste recycle. The game has been designed as a competition between the robot Pepper and a child. During the game, the robot simultaneously challenges and teaches the child how to recycle waste materials. To endow the robot with the capability to play as a game opponent in a real-world context, it is equipped with an image recognition module based on a Convolutional Neural Network to detect and classify the waste material as a child would do, i.e. by simply looking at it. A formal experiment involving 51 primary school students is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the game in terms of different factors such as the interaction with the robot, the users’ cognitive and affective dimensions towards ecological sustainability, and the propensity to recycle. The obtained results are encouraging and draw promising scenarios for educational robotics in changing children’s attitudes toward recycling. Indeed Pepper turns out to be positively evaluated by children as a trustful and believable companion and this allows children to be concentrated on the “memorization” task during the game. Moreover, the use of real objects as waste items during the game turns out to be a successful approach not only for perceived learning effectiveness but also for the children’s engagement

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars and the Demise of the Human Mediator

As technology has advanced, many have wondered whether (or simply when) artificial intelligent devices will replace the humans who perform complex, interactive, interpersonal tasks such as dispute resolution. Has science now progressed to the point that artificial intelligence devices can replace human mediators, arbitrators, dispute resolvers and problem solvers? Can humanoid robots, attractive avatars and other relational agents create the requisite level of trust and elicit the truthful, perhaps intimate or painful, disclosures often necessary to resolve a dispute or solve a problem? This article will explore these questions. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced that the demise of the human mediator or arbitrator is imminent, one cannot deny that artificial intelligence now has the capability to assume many of the responsibilities currently being performed by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practitioners. It is fascinating (and perhaps unsettling) to realize the complexity and seriousness of tasks currently delegated to avatars and robots. This article will review some of those delegations and suggest how the artificial intelligence developed to complete those assignments may be relevant to dispute resolution and problem solving. “Relational Agents,” which can have a physical presence such as a robot, be embodied in an avatar, or have no detectable form whatsoever and exist only as software, are able to create long term socio-economic relationships with users built on trust, rapport and therapeutic goals. Relational agents are interacting with humans in circumstances that have significant consequences in the physical world. These interactions provide insights as to how robots and avatars can participate productively in dispute resolution processes. Can human mediators and arbitrators be replaced by robots and avatars that not only physically resemble humans, but also act, think, and reason like humans? And to raise a particularly interesting question, can robots, avatars and other relational agents look, move, act, think, and reason even “better” than humans

Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems

As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions of choreography become central to their design, placement, and application. With a human viewer or counterpart present, a system will automatically be interpreted within context, style of movement, and form factor by human beings as animate elements of their environment. The interpretation by this human counterpart is critical to the success of the system's integration: knobs on the system need to make sense to a human counterpart; an artificial agent should have a way of notifying a human counterpart of a change in system state, possibly through motion profiles; and the motion of a human counterpart may have important contextual clues for task completion. Thus, professional choreographers, dance practitioners, and movement analysts are critical to research in robotics. They have design methods for movement that align with human audience perception, can identify simplified features of movement for human-robot interaction goals, and have detailed knowledge of the capacity of human movement. This article provides approaches employed by one research lab, specific impacts on technical and artistic projects within, and principles that may guide future such work. The background section reports on choreography, somatic perspectives, improvisation, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, and robotics. From this context methods including embodied exercises, writing prompts, and community building activities have been developed to facilitate interdisciplinary research. The results of this work is presented as an overview of a smattering of projects in areas like high-level motion planning, software development for rapid prototyping of movement, artistic output, and user studies that help understand how people interpret movement. Finally, guiding principles for other groups to adopt are posited.Comment: Under review at MDPI Arts Special Issue "The Machine as Artist (for the 21st Century)" http://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/Machine_Artis

Social touch in human–computer interaction

Touch is our primary non-verbal communication channel for conveying intimate emotions and as such essential for our physical and emotional wellbeing. In our digital age, human social interaction is often mediated. However, even though there is increasing evidence that mediated touch affords affective communication, current communication systems (such as videoconferencing) still do not support communication through the sense of touch. As a result, mediated communication does not provide the intense affective experience of co-located communication. The need for ICT mediated or generated touch as an intuitive way of social communication is even further emphasized by the growing interest in the use of touch-enabled agents and robots for healthcare, teaching, and telepresence applications. Here, we review the important role of social touch in our daily life and the available evidence that affective touch can be mediated reliably between humans and between humans and digital agents. We base our observations on evidence from psychology, computer science, sociology, and neuroscience with focus on the first two. Our review shows that mediated affective touch can modulate physiological responses, increase trust and affection, help to establish bonds between humans and avatars or robots, and initiate pro-social behavior. We argue that ICT mediated or generated social touch can (a) intensify the perceived social presence of remote communication partners and (b) enable computer systems to more effectively convey affective information. However, this research field on the crossroads of ICT and psychology is still embryonic and we identify several topics that can help to mature the field in the following areas: establishing an overarching theoretical framework, employing better research methodologies, developing basic social touch building blocks, and solving specific ICT challenges