467 research outputs found
Integrating Constrained Experiments in Long-term Human-Robot Interaction using Task– and Scenario–based Prototyping
© 2015 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis© Dag Sverre Syrdal, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Kheng Lee Koay, and Wan Ching Ho. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Please check the License conditions for the work which you wish to reuse. Full and appropriate attribution must be given. This permission does not cover any third party copyrighted material which may appear in the work requested.In order to investigate how the use of robots may impact everyday tasks, 12 participants interacted with a University of Hertfordshire Sunflower robot over a period of 8 weeks in the university’s Robot House.. Participants performed two constrained tasks, one physical and one cognitive , 4 times over this period. Participant responses were recorded using a variety of measures including the System Usability Scale and the NASA Task Load Index . The use of the robot had an impact on the experienced workload of the participants differently for the two tasks, and this effect changed over time. In the physical task, there was evidence of adaptation to the robot’s behaviour. For the cognitive task, the use of the robot was experienced as more frustrating in the later weeks.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio
Sharing spaces, sharing lives - The impact of robot mobility on user perception of a home companion robot
Syrdal D.S., Dautenhahn K., Koay K.L., Walters M.L., Ho W.C. (2013) 'Sharing Spaces, Sharing Lives – The Impact of Robot Mobility on User Perception of a Home Companion Robot', In: Herrmann G., Pearson M.J., Lenz A., Bremner P., Spiers A., Leonards U. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 8239. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02675-6_32 Paper presented at the International Conference on Social Robotics, (ICSR) 2013, Bristol, UK, 27-29 October 2013. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013This paper examines the role of spatial behaviours in building human-robot relationships. A group of 8 participants, involved in a long-term HRI study, interacted with an artificial agent using different embodiments over a period of one and a half months. The robot embodiments had similar interactional and expressive capabilities, but only one embodiment was capable of moving. Participants reported feeling closer to the robot embodiment capable of physical movement and rated it as more likable. Results suggest that while expressive and communicative abilities may be important in terms of building affinity and rapport with human interactants, the importance of physical interactions when negotiating shared physical space in real time should not be underestimated
Topology of the ground state of two interacting Bose-Einstein condensates
We investigate the spatial patterns of the ground state of two interacting
Bose-Einstein condensates. We consider the general case of two different atomic
species (with different mass and in different hyperfine states) trapped in a
magnetic potential whose eigenaxes can be tilted with respect to the vertical
direction, giving rise to a non trivial gravitational sag. Despite the
complicated geometry, we show that within the Thomas-Fermi approximations and
upon appropriate coordinate transformations, the equations for the density
distributions can be put in a very simple form. Starting from this expressions
we give explicit rules to classify the different spatial topologies which can
be produced, and we discuss how the behavior of the system is influenced by the
inter-atomic scattering length. We also compare explicit examples with the full
numeric Gross-Pitaevskii calculation.Comment: RevTex4, 8 pages, 7 figure
Boundary of two mixed Bose-Einstein condensates
The boundary of two mixed Bose-Einstein condensates interacting repulsively
was considered in the case of spatial separation at zero temperature.
Analytical expressions for density distribution of condensates were obtained by
solving two coupled nonlinear Gross-Pitaevskii equations in cases corresponding
weak and strong separation. These expressions allow to consider excitation
spectrum of a particle confined in the vicinity of the boundary as well as
surface waves associated with surface tension.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.
Dimensional and Temperature Crossover in Trapped Bose Gases
We investigate the long-range phase coherence of homogeneous and trapped Bose
gases as a function of the geometry of the trap, the temperature, and the
mean-field interactions in the weakly interacting limit. We explicitly take
into account the (quasi)condensate depletion due to quantum and thermal
fluctuations, i.e., we include the effects of both phase and density
fluctuations. In particular, we determine the phase diagram of the gas by
calculating the off-diagonal one-particle density matrix and discuss the
various crossovers that occur in this phase diagram and the feasibility of
their experimental observation in trapped Bose gases.Comment: One figure added, typos corrected, refernces adde
Atom trapping and two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates in field-induced adiabatic potentials
We discuss a method to create two-dimensional traps as well as atomic shell,
or bubble, states for a Bose-Einstein condensate initially prepared in a
conventional magnetic trap. The scheme relies on the use of time-dependent,
radio frequency-induced adiabatic potentials. These are shown to form a
versatile and robust tool to generate novel trapping potentials. Our shell
states take the form of thin, highly stable matter-wave bubbles and can serve
as stepping-stones to prepare atoms in highly-excited trap eigenstates or to
study `collapse and revival phenomena'. Their creation requires gravitational
effects to be compensated by applying additional optical dipole potentials.
However, in our scheme gravitation can also be exploited to provide a route to
two-dimensional atom trapping. We demonstrate the loading process for such a
trap and examine experimental conditions under which a 2D condensate may be
prepared.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure
Universal physics of 2+1 particles with non-zero angular momentum
The zero-energy universal properties of scattering between a particle and a
dimer that involves an identical particle are investigated for arbitrary
scattering angular momenta. For this purpose, we derive an integral equation
that generalises the Skorniakov - Ter-Martirosian equation to the case of
non-zero angular momentum. As the mass ratio between the particles is varied,
we find various scattering resonances that can be attributed to the appearance
of universal trimers and Efimov trimers at the collisional threshold.Comment: 6 figure
Designing Conducting Polymers Using Bioinspired Ant Algorithms
Ant algorithms are inspired in real ants and the main idea is to create
virtual ants that travel into the space of possible solution depositing virtual
pheromone proportional to how good a specific solution is. This creates a
autocatalytic (positive feedback) process that can be used to generate
automatic solutions to very difficult problems. In the present work we show
that these algorithms can be used coupled to tight-binding hamiltonians to
design conducting polymers with pre-specified properties. The methodology is
completely general and can be used for a large number of optimization problems
in materials science
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