Agent archetypes for human-drone interaction: Social robots or objects with intent?

Departing from our earlier work on conceptualizing "social drones," we enrich the discussion using notions of "agent archetypes" and "objects with intent" from recent interaction design literature. We briefly unpack these notions, and argue that they are useful in characterizing both design intentions and human perceptions. Thus they have the potential to inform the creation and study of HDI artifacts. Upon these notions, we synthesize relevant implications and directions for design research, in the form of research questions and design challenges. These questions and challenges inform our current and future work. We submit our resources, arguments, aims, and hypotheses to the iHDI 2020 community as a reflective exercise, aiming to refine our work in synergy with other participants

Next steps for Human-Computer Integration

Human-Computer Integration (HInt) is an emerging paradigm in which computational and human systems are closely interwoven. Integrating computers with the human body is not new. However, we believe that with rapid technological advancements, increasing real-world deployments, and growing ethical and societal implications, it is critical to identify an agenda for future research. We present a set of challenges for HInt research, formulated over the course of a five-day workshop consisting of 29 experts who have designed, deployed, and studied HInt systems. This agenda aims to guide researchers in a structured way towards a more coordinated and conscientious future of human-computer integration

Reduced Cortisol and Metabolic Responses of Thin Ewes to an Acute Cold Challenge in Mid-Pregnancy: Implications for Animal Physiology and Welfare

Background: Low food availability leading to reductions in Body Condition Score (BCS; 0 indicates emaciation and 5 obesity) in sheep often coincides with low temperatures associated with the onset of winter in New Zealand. The ability to adapt to reductions in environmental temperature may be impaired in animals with low BCS, in particular during pregnancy when metabolic demand is higher. Here we assess whether BCS affects a pregnant animal’s ability to cope with cold challenges. Methods: Eighteen pregnant ewes with a BCS of 2.760.1 were fed to attain low (LBC: BCS2.360.1), medium (MBC: BCS3.260.2) or high BCS (HBC: BCS3.660.2). Shorn ewes were exposed to a 6-h acute cold challenge in a climate-controlled room (wet and windy conditions, 4.460.1uC) in mid-pregnancy. Blood samples were collected during the BCS change phase, acute cold challenge and recovery phase. Results: During the BCS change phase, plasma glucose and leptin concentrations declined while free fatty acids (FFA) increased in LBC compared to MBC (P,0.01, P,0.01 and P,0.05, respectively) and HBC ewes (P,0.05, P,0.01 and P,0.01, respectively). During the cold challenge, plasma cortisol concentrations were lower in LBC than MBC (P,0.05) and HBC ewes (P,0.05), and FFA and insulin concentrations were lower in LBC than HBC ewes (P,0.05 and P,0.001, respectively). Leptin concentrations declined in MBC and HBC ewes while remaining unchanged in LBC ewes (P,0.01). Glucose concentrations and internal body temperature (Tcore) increased in all treatments, although peak Tcore tended to be higher in HBC ewes (P,0.1). During the recovery phase, T4 concentrations were lower in LBC ewes (P,0.05). Conclusion: Even though all ewes were able to increase Tcore and mobilize glucose, low BCS animals had considerably reduced cortisol and metabolic responses to a cold challenge in mid-pregnancy, suggesting that their ability to adapt to cold challenges through some of the expected pathways was reduced

Kultiverande av mekanisk sympati : meningsskapande med mångtydiga maskiner

Moving with a drone can be a captivating and reflective experience. A drone can easily grab my attention, yet its hold is distinctly different to a screen where my body goes missing and my eyes are held captive. Instead, my body feels alive and present. As if every part of it is playing a crucial role in keeping the drone in the air. The sensors on my body enable the drone to be sensitive to my movements, which in turn increases my sensitivity to the drone's movements. It's like carrying a cup of hot tea with a book under your arm, any sudden movement from any part of your body affects the tea in the cup and vice versa. In this thesis, I traced back through this experience and several other first-person experiences with machines to reflect on their constituent moments of sensing and acting. In doing so, I came to realise that these moments were fundamental to making meaning with machines, that is, how you come to understand its function and its purpose in your daily life. I used a combination of soma design and industrial design practice to draw from these first-person experiences and create three systems, Tai Chi in the Clouds, Drone Chi and How to Train Your Drone. Through the design of the first two systems, I attempted to distil the feeling of being a beginner tai chi student into a human-drone interaction. Subsequent user studies of these two systems demonstrated some degree of success, but it was the participants' own interpretations that sparked my curiosity and drove the creative process for the third system. I was fascinated by the tendency for participants to liken unfamiliar feelings to past experiences when faced with an ambiguous situation with a drone. This prompted me to reflect on the ambiguity that presented itself to me during the design process of Tai Chi in the Clouds and Drone Chi. There I found rich associations with my past experience racing go-karts and maintaining old cars. This culminated in the design of How to Train Your Drone, a more ambiguous human-drone interaction intended to support the participants’ own interpretations and allow their unique constellation of sensing and acting to drive the meaning making process. The subsequent analysis of a month-long user study led me to describe the unique and tacit relationship that unfolds between a human and a drone as Mechanical Sympathy. Mechanical Sympathy is a process of sensing and acting that leads to a cumulative appreciation ofhuman-with-machine. It does not, in the reductive sense, mean being emotionally sympathetic towards a machine, but rather a synergy or bodily understanding between human and machine that shapes how they can act together. This process entails fostering an awareness of your capabilities, limitations, and changing body in relation to a machine and vice versa. It also allows you to craft your own experiences with a machine and explore how that machine, in turn, shapes your aesthetic preferences. Through this process, you can reflect on what kinds of human-machine experiences hold value and meaning. Whilst analysing the interview data from How to Train Your Drone it became clear to me that the participants did not program the drones to perform some action as much as they shaped what the drone could and could not sense; how reality was presented to the drone. This was an important shift in perspective that led me to propose an expansion of the soma design program that considers designing interactive technology as less of a material to be mastered and more of an agent to evolve with — both for the designer and later for users. Central to this shift was the concept of the Umwelt, first introduced by Jakob von Uexküll which posits that we cannot know what it is like to be anything but human and therefore the realities of other beings are essentially unknowable. However, we can make meaning with them by paying attention, which, fittingly, is something that is required by both the soma design process and its resulting artefacts. Additionally, I looked to the fields of evolutionary robotics and human-robot interaction to bring structure to this expanded soma design program and situate it in the literature. Ultimately, I aimed to afford both the designer and the user novel ways to embrace ambiguity when interacting with machines by providing opportunities for aesthetic appreciation and meaning making. The thesis concludes with a speculative look at the challenges this approach to design faces in the context of daily life.Att röra sig med en drönare kan vara en fängslande och reflekterande upplevelse. En drönare kan lätt fånga min uppmärksamhet, ändå fångar den mig på ett helt annorlunda sätt än en skärm, där min kropp försvinner och mina ögon är låsta. Istället, känns min kropp levande och närvarande. Som om varje del av den spelar en avgörande roll för att hålla drönaren i luften. Sensorerna på min kropp gör det möjligt för drönaren att vara känslig för mina rörelser, vilket i sin tur ökar min känslighet till drönarens rörelser. Det är som att bära en kopp hett te och samtidigt en bok under armen, alla plötsliga kroppsrörelser, oavsett kroppsdel, påverkar teet i koppen och vice versa.Jag spårade genom denna upplevelse och flera and första personsupplevelser med maskiner tillbaka för att reflektera över deras konstituerande stunder av att känna och utföra. Genom detta förstod jag att dessa stunder var fundamentala för att skapa mening tillsammans med en maskin, det vill säga, hur du förstår dess funktion och dess syfte i vardagen. Jag har använt en kombination av soma design och industridesignpraktik för att genom dessa första personupplevelse skapa tre system Tai Chi in the Clouds, Drone Chi and How to Train Your Drone. Genom de två första systemen försökte jag att förmedla känslan av att vara en nybörjar Tai Chi-student in i en människa-drönar interaktion. De följande användarstudierna av dess system visade en viss grad av framgång, men det var deltagarnas egna tolkningar som gjorde mig nyfiken och drev på den kreativa processen till ett tredje system. Jag blev fascinerad av deltagarnas tendens att likna de obekanta känslor de fick då de interagerade med drönarna med sina tidigare erfarenheter av att ha hamnat i en mångtydig situation. Detta fick mig att reflektera över mångtydigheten som blev tydlig för mig i designprocessen av TaiChi in the Clouds and Drone Chi. Där hittade jag rika associationer till min tidigare upplevelse av att tävla i go-kart och att underhålla gamla bilar. Detta kulminerade i designen av How to Train Your Drone, en mer mångtydig människa-drönar interaktion som syftar till att stötta deltagarnas egna tolkningar och låta deras egen unika konstellation av att känna av och agera driva skapandet av mening. Analysen som följde en månadslång användarstudie ledde mig fram till att beskriva det unika och till karaktären underförstådda förhållande som utvecklar sig mellan an människa och en drönare som Mekanisk Sympati. Mekanisk sympati är en process av att känna av och agerande som leder till en kumulativ uppskattning av människa-med-maskin. Förenklat är det inte samma som att vara känslomässigt sympatiskt mot en maskin, utan snarare är det en synergi eller kroppslig förståelse mellan människa och maskin som formar hur de kan agera tillsammans. Denna process innebär att medvetandegöra sina egna förmågor, begränsningar och kropp i förändring i förhållande till en maskin och vice versa. Det tillåter också att du kan skapa dina egna upplevelser tillsammans med en maskin och utforskar hur den maskinen, å sin sida, skapar dina estetiska preferenser. Genom denna process kan du reflektera över vilka sorters människa-maskinupplevelser som innehåller värde och mening. Medan jag analyserade intervjudatat från How to Train Your Drone, blev det tydligt för mig att deltagarna inte programmerade drönarna att utföra särskilda handlingar lika mycket som de formade vad drönaren kunde och inte kunde känna av; hur verkligheten presenterade sig för drönaren. Detta var en viktig ändring av synvinkel, som ledde mig till att föreslå en vidgning av soma designprogrammet som tar i beaktning design av interaktivt material, mindre som ett material som ska behärskas utan mer som ett medel som man utvecklas med — både för designern och senare för användare. Centralt för denna ändring av synvinkel var Umwelts-konceptet, som först introducerades av Jacob von Uexkull, vilket tar ståndpunkten att vi inte kan veta hur det är att vara något annat än människor och därför är andra varelser verkligheter i grund och botten okända. Däremot så kan vi skapa mening med dem genom att vara uppmärksamma, vilket passande nog är något som krävs både i en soma designprocess och dess slutgiltiga artefakt. Dessutom har jag tittat närmare på fälten evolutionär robotik och människa-robotinteraktion för att strukturera detta utvidgade soma designprogram och placera det i litteraturen. Slutgiltigt, så syftade jag att till att tillhandahålla båda designern och användare med nya sätt att anamma mångtydighet vid interaktion med maskiner genom att tillhandahålla möjligheter till estetisk uppskattning och meningsskapande. Avhandlingen knyts ihop med en spekulativ syn på de utmaningar som denna designansats möter i vardagskontexten.    QC 20230927</p

Kultiverande av mekanisk sympati : meningsskapande med mångtydiga maskiner

Moving with a drone can be a captivating and reflective experience. A drone can easily grab my attention, yet its hold is distinctly different to a screen where my body goes missing and my eyes are held captive. Instead, my body feels alive and present. As if every part of it is playing a crucial role in keeping the drone in the air. The sensors on my body enable the drone to be sensitive to my movements, which in turn increases my sensitivity to the drone's movements. It's like carrying a cup of hot tea with a book under your arm, any sudden movement from any part of your body affects the tea in the cup and vice versa. In this thesis, I traced back through this experience and several other first-person experiences with machines to reflect on their constituent moments of sensing and acting. In doing so, I came to realise that these moments were fundamental to making meaning with machines, that is, how you come to understand its function and its purpose in your daily life. I used a combination of soma design and industrial design practice to draw from these first-person experiences and create three systems, Tai Chi in the Clouds, Drone Chi and How to Train Your Drone. Through the design of the first two systems, I attempted to distil the feeling of being a beginner tai chi student into a human-drone interaction. Subsequent user studies of these two systems demonstrated some degree of success, but it was the participants' own interpretations that sparked my curiosity and drove the creative process for the third system. I was fascinated by the tendency for participants to liken unfamiliar feelings to past experiences when faced with an ambiguous situation with a drone. This prompted me to reflect on the ambiguity that presented itself to me during the design process of Tai Chi in the Clouds and Drone Chi. There I found rich associations with my past experience racing go-karts and maintaining old cars. This culminated in the design of How to Train Your Drone, a more ambiguous human-drone interaction intended to support the participants’ own interpretations and allow their unique constellation of sensing and acting to drive the meaning making process. The subsequent analysis of a month-long user study led me to describe the unique and tacit relationship that unfolds between a human and a drone as Mechanical Sympathy. Mechanical Sympathy is a process of sensing and acting that leads to a cumulative appreciation ofhuman-with-machine. It does not, in the reductive sense, mean being emotionally sympathetic towards a machine, but rather a synergy or bodily understanding between human and machine that shapes how they can act together. This process entails fostering an awareness of your capabilities, limitations, and changing body in relation to a machine and vice versa. It also allows you to craft your own experiences with a machine and explore how that machine, in turn, shapes your aesthetic preferences. Through this process, you can reflect on what kinds of human-machine experiences hold value and meaning. Whilst analysing the interview data from How to Train Your Drone it became clear to me that the participants did not program the drones to perform some action as much as they shaped what the drone could and could not sense; how reality was presented to the drone. This was an important shift in perspective that led me to propose an expansion of the soma design program that considers designing interactive technology as less of a material to be mastered and more of an agent to evolve with — both for the designer and later for users. Central to this shift was the concept of the Umwelt, first introduced by Jakob von Uexküll which posits that we cannot know what it is like to be anything but human and therefore the realities of other beings are essentially unknowable. However, we can make meaning with them by paying attention, which, fittingly, is something that is required by both the soma design process and its resulting artefacts. Additionally, I looked to the fields of evolutionary robotics and human-robot interaction to bring structure to this expanded soma design program and situate it in the literature. Ultimately, I aimed to afford both the designer and the user novel ways to embrace ambiguity when interacting with machines by providing opportunities for aesthetic appreciation and meaning making. The thesis concludes with a speculative look at the challenges this approach to design faces in the context of daily life.Att röra sig med en drönare kan vara en fängslande och reflekterande upplevelse. En drönare kan lätt fånga min uppmärksamhet, ändå fångar den mig på ett helt annorlunda sätt än en skärm, där min kropp försvinner och mina ögon är låsta. Istället, känns min kropp levande och närvarande. Som om varje del av den spelar en avgörande roll för att hålla drönaren i luften. Sensorerna på min kropp gör det möjligt för drönaren att vara känslig för mina rörelser, vilket i sin tur ökar min känslighet till drönarens rörelser. Det är som att bära en kopp hett te och samtidigt en bok under armen, alla plötsliga kroppsrörelser, oavsett kroppsdel, påverkar teet i koppen och vice versa.Jag spårade genom denna upplevelse och flera and första personsupplevelser med maskiner tillbaka för att reflektera över deras konstituerande stunder av att känna och utföra. Genom detta förstod jag att dessa stunder var fundamentala för att skapa mening tillsammans med en maskin, det vill säga, hur du förstår dess funktion och dess syfte i vardagen. Jag har använt en kombination av soma design och industridesignpraktik för att genom dessa första personupplevelse skapa tre system Tai Chi in the Clouds, Drone Chi and How to Train Your Drone. Genom de två första systemen försökte jag att förmedla känslan av att vara en nybörjar Tai Chi-student in i en människa-drönar interaktion. De följande användarstudierna av dess system visade en viss grad av framgång, men det var deltagarnas egna tolkningar som gjorde mig nyfiken och drev på den kreativa processen till ett tredje system. Jag blev fascinerad av deltagarnas tendens att likna de obekanta känslor de fick då de interagerade med drönarna med sina tidigare erfarenheter av att ha hamnat i en mångtydig situation. Detta fick mig att reflektera över mångtydigheten som blev tydlig för mig i designprocessen av TaiChi in the Clouds and Drone Chi. Där hittade jag rika associationer till min tidigare upplevelse av att tävla i go-kart och att underhålla gamla bilar. Detta kulminerade i designen av How to Train Your Drone, en mer mångtydig människa-drönar interaktion som syftar till att stötta deltagarnas egna tolkningar och låta deras egen unika konstellation av att känna av och agera driva skapandet av mening. Analysen som följde en månadslång användarstudie ledde mig fram till att beskriva det unika och till karaktären underförstådda förhållande som utvecklar sig mellan an människa och en drönare som Mekanisk Sympati. Mekanisk sympati är en process av att känna av och agerande som leder till en kumulativ uppskattning av människa-med-maskin. Förenklat är det inte samma som att vara känslomässigt sympatiskt mot en maskin, utan snarare är det en synergi eller kroppslig förståelse mellan människa och maskin som formar hur de kan agera tillsammans. Denna process innebär att medvetandegöra sina egna förmågor, begränsningar och kropp i förändring i förhållande till en maskin och vice versa. Det tillåter också att du kan skapa dina egna upplevelser tillsammans med en maskin och utforskar hur den maskinen, å sin sida, skapar dina estetiska preferenser. Genom denna process kan du reflektera över vilka sorters människa-maskinupplevelser som innehåller värde och mening. Medan jag analyserade intervjudatat från How to Train Your Drone, blev det tydligt för mig att deltagarna inte programmerade drönarna att utföra särskilda handlingar lika mycket som de formade vad drönaren kunde och inte kunde känna av; hur verkligheten presenterade sig för drönaren. Detta var en viktig ändring av synvinkel, som ledde mig till att föreslå en vidgning av soma designprogrammet som tar i beaktning design av interaktivt material, mindre som ett material som ska behärskas utan mer som ett medel som man utvecklas med — både för designern och senare för användare. Centralt för denna ändring av synvinkel var Umwelts-konceptet, som först introducerades av Jacob von Uexkull, vilket tar ståndpunkten att vi inte kan veta hur det är att vara något annat än människor och därför är andra varelser verkligheter i grund och botten okända. Däremot så kan vi skapa mening med dem genom att vara uppmärksamma, vilket passande nog är något som krävs både i en soma designprocess och dess slutgiltiga artefakt. Dessutom har jag tittat närmare på fälten evolutionär robotik och människa-robotinteraktion för att strukturera detta utvidgade soma designprogram och placera det i litteraturen. Slutgiltigt, så syftade jag att till att tillhandahålla båda designern och användare med nya sätt att anamma mångtydighet vid interaktion med maskiner genom att tillhandahålla möjligheter till estetisk uppskattning och meningsskapande. Avhandlingen knyts ihop med en spekulativ syn på de utmaningar som denna designansats möter i vardagskontexten.    QC 20230927</p

Simulation Components in Gazebo

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 IEEE.We present work on structuring robotics simulation scenarios into components. Components can comprise simulation entities with a physical counterpart such as automated guided vehicles, drones, robots and machines. Components are typically further structured into sub-components, e.g., a robot arm or a gripper, and can be used to build digital twins. Different aspects for classifying components can be distinguished; here we concentrate on composability, performance and fidelity.In this paper, we are mainly concerned with components in the robotics simulation tool Gazebo used with Robot Operating System. Several structured scenario case studies are described. We investigate how these scenarios behave in Gazebo with respect to performance and fidelity for selected cases.Peer reviewe

Integrated Apparatus for Empirical Studies with Embodied Autonomous Social Drones

International audienceCurrent use cases for drones often involve a remote human operator and/or an environment which is inaccessible to humans. Social drones, which we define as autonomous drones that operate in close proximity to human users or bystanders, are distinct from these. The design of social drones, in terms of both aesthetics and behavior, can involve particular human factors that require further study. Currently, in lieu of empirical studies with autonomous embodied agents, approaches such as Wizard of Oz methods, questionnaires, videos, and/or makeshift mechanisms are often employed to investigate interactions with social drones. For empirical design research using embodied, co-located drones, we have been developing an experimental setup that enables high precision drone control, as well as rich multimodal data collection and analysis, in an integrated fashion. We present this apparatus and its rationale in this paper. Using this setup, we aim to advance our understanding of the psychology and ergonomics of interacting with autonomous social drones through experiments, and extract design implications

Designing drone chi: Unpacking the thinking and making of somaesthetic human-drone interaction

Drone Chi is a Tai Chi inspired human-drone interaction experience. As a design research project, situated within somaesthetic interaction design, where a central topic is cultivating bodily and sensory appreciation to improve one\u27s quality of life. Drone Chi investigates the potential of autonomous micro-quadcopters as a design material for somaesthetic HCI. Through a quasi-chronological account of the design process, this pictorial articulates how the sensory experiences of Tai Chi were integrated into Drone Chi. Taking a slow and open-ended design research approach, we iteratively developed the project through somaesthetic, product design and engineering perspectives and drew heavily on design analogies and imagery for inspiration. This elevated the influence of the soma amongst narrow engineering parameters and usability requirements. This pictorial serves as a reflective resource for designers who are experimenting with merging their native discipline with someasthetic interaction design

Enhancing social experiences with shared drones

Over the last 10 years, drones have become smaller, more durable, affordable, and easier to fly. Their photo and videotaking capabilities have significantly improved. In fact, the proliferation of drones is already happening, with new no-fly zones being developed in more territories. Given current developments, we envision that everyone will be able to carry a pocket drone with them at all times, just like we do with smartphones today. Drones appeal to users as they offer, among other things, a unique view of landscapes, wildlife, the user, and other people. We conducted a survey in which we asked participants about their video and phototaking habits and how they could envision using a drone for these purposes. Based on our findings, we envision systems in which nearby drones are available for personal and shared usage. This allows having all the advantages of drones but leaves control over the airspace to regulators, thus enabling safely and respectfully flying over areas such as national parks or zoos. Moreover, we envision shared drones as a means of sparking new social interactions