Applying adaptive social mobile agent to facilitate learning

In this paper, we present our idea about applying an adaptive social mobile agent in a game based scenario to support foreign language vocabulary learning. We hypothesize that through implementing an adaptive agent, we may mitigate the problem of a loss in child engagement or may also prolong the time a child takes to lose interest. We then present details on architecture and implementation of an adaptive social mobile agent

Towards the Applicability of NAO Robot for Children with Autism in Pakistan

In this paper, we present a HRI study that reports on the potential of NAO as a socially assistive robot in Pakistan. Our findings generated through interviewing 2 parents and 5 teachers on the plausibility of using NAO robot as an interaction partner show that both groups welcomed the use of NAO at schools. They, however, were sceptical due to missing NAO’s facial expressions and certain body parts such as nose and lips. They also emphasised the importance of creating natural text to speech interface for the Urdu Language. Our findings taken from 7 autistic children to measure their level of social interaction during HRI revealed that children positively engaged with the NAO robot and showed a significant number of both verbal and non-verbal behaviours

Exploring the potential of NAO robot as an interviewer

In this paper, we present our early findings on the utilization of a social robot during the formal interview process. We implemented a mechanism that enabled the robot to ask context-aware questions based on the data based on the resume or linked-in profile of the applicant. Later, we conducted an exploratory between-subject evaluation with 8 adult participants to find the difference in the duration of applicants responses given to the NAO robot and to the human interviewer. Our results didn’t find the significant difference in terms of participant responses to human and robotic interviewers

Understanding Behaviours and Roles for Social and Adaptive Robots In Education

In order to establish a long-term relationship between a robot and a child, robots need to learn from the environment, adapt to specific user needs and display behaviours and roles accordingly. Literature shows that certain robot behaviours could negatively impact child’s learning and performance [17]. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to not only understand teacher’s opinion on the existing effective social behaviours and roles but also to understand novel behaviours that can positively influence children performance in a language learning setting. In this paper, we present our results based on interviews conducted with 8 language teachers to get their opinion on how a robot can efficiently perform behaviour adaptation to influence learning and achieve long term engagement. We also present results on future directions extracted from the interviews with teachers

Children views' on social robot's adaptations in education

In this paper, we present our results of a long-term study conducted at a school with 12 children, in which they played snakes and ladders game with a NAO robot for 3- times across 10 days. The goal of the study was to understand children's view on various adaptation behaviours such as emotion, memory, personality for a social robot in education for maintaining and creating long-term engagement and acceptance. On the last day, we divided the children into 4 different groups to perform a focus group activity with them. Our results show that children reacted positively towards the use of robots in education. Children also emphasised that the robot should adapt based on previous memory, their emotions, and personality in real-time

HCI down under: reflecting on a decade of the OzCHI conference

In this study we present a scientometric analysis of the Australian Conference on Human–Computer Interaction (OzCHI) proceedings over the period of a decade (2006–2015). Conference proceedings were manually extracted from the ACM Digital Library and analysed. We observed OzCHI to be a popular conference attracting both submissions and citations. A group of leading researchers dominated the publication count followed by a long list of mid career academics. We observed the themes of Design, Health and Well-being and Education to be growing in importance. We also observed that full papers were cited significantly more than short papers. We conclude with a reflection on our methodology and a proposal of recommendations for the HCI/OzCHI community in Australia

Robot's adaptive emotional feedback sustains children's social engagement and promotes their vocabulary learning : a long-term child-robot interaction study

In this article, we present an emotion and memory model for a social robot. The model allowed the robot to create a memory account of a child’s emotional events over four individual sessions. The robot then adapted its behaviour based on the developed memory. The model was applied on the NAO robot to teach vocabulary to children while playing the popular game ‘Snakes and Ladders’. We conducted an exploratory evaluation of our model with 24 children at a primary school for 2 weeks to verify its impact on children’s long-term social engagement and overall vocabulary learning. Our preliminary results showed that the behaviour generated based on our model was able to sustain social engagement. In addition, it also helped children to improve their vocabulary. We also evaluated the impact of the positive, negative and neutral emotional feedback of the NAO robot on children’s vocabulary learning. Three groups of children (eight per group) interacted with the robot on four separate occasions over a period of 2 weeks. Our results showed that the condition where the robot displayed positive emotional feedback had a significantly positive effect on the child’s vocabulary learning performance as compared to the two other conditions: negative feedback and neutral feedback

An assessment into the characteristics of award winning papers at CHI

The overall readability of CHI publications is not known. In addition, little is understood about what lexical or demographic characteristics are unique to award winning papers at CHI and if they are significantly different from non award winning papers. We therefore carry out an exploration and assessment into the readability metrics as well as a meta analysis of 382 full papers and 54 notes from the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions at CHI. Our results illustrate that notes did not have any significant trends whatsoever. On the other hand, award winning full papers were shown to have lower readability as compared to non award winning full papers. The type of research contribution played an important role; such that award winning full papers were significantly more likely to have a theoretical contribution as compared to non award winning full papers and full papers that presented an artifact as their contribution were more readable than other full papers. Our demographic analysis of authors indicated that the experience of authors nor their region of affiliation were not associated with the likelihood of their full paper being awarded. The experience of authors did not effect the overall readability of full papers however the region of affiliation did have a significant influence on the overall readability of full papers. In conclusion, we speculate on our obtained results through linkages with prior work in readability analysis