An Exploratory Study to Determine the Effects Conversational Repetition Has on Perceived Workload and User Experience Quality in an Online Human-Robot Interaction

Human-robot interaction studies in the Caribbean currently face two challenges. First, the robots used in these studies have difficulty understanding many of the regional accents spoken study participants. Secondly, the global pandemic has made in-person HRI studies in the Caribbean more challenging due to the physical and social distancing mandates. This paper reports on our exploratory study to determine what kind of impact these two challenges have on HRI by evaluating the effect conversational repetition has on a human-robot conversation done using video conferencing software. Using network analysis, the results obtained suggest that conversational repetition has several subtle relationships on perceived workload. One interesting finding is that frustration and effort are indirectly affected by conversational repetition. Results from the short User Experience Questionnaire indicate that the overall quality of the user experience is perceived as positive-neutral. This encouraging result indicates that video conferencing may be a suitable interaction modality for HRI studies in the Caribbean

Does Repetition Affect Acceptance? A Social Robot Adoption Model for Technologically-Savvy Users in the Caribbean

There is little research on use and adoption factors for social robots in the Caribbean. In one pilot study, the Zenbo companion robot was used to evaluate potential social robot use in a Caribbean setting. An informal observation from that study was the existence of communication failure–participants frequently repeated commands to the robot. Based on this observation, we have undertaken this study to identify the factors that affect robot adoption among technologically-savvy Caribbean users (undergraduate Computer Science and Information Technology (IT) students) and create a technology adoption model for this type of user. Our model shows that communication failure, manifested as repetition, has no effect on technology acceptance. Additionally, social attitudes towards robots, like the perception of competence and warmth, also have no effect on adoption. This social robot adoption model is the first of its kind for the Caribbean and helps contextualize factors that can affect social robots’ adoption in the region

The Qualitative Study of Recovery-Oriented Care in Clinical Supervision: A Methodological Overview

Abstract Over the last several years, implementation of Recovery-Oriented Car

Remote-HRI: A Pilot Study to Evaluate a Methodology for Performing HRI Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The essential component of studying how humans and robots relate is to observe how they interact with each other. This fact has been taken for granted until the COVID-19 pandemic made all such HRI study-based interactions verboten. We address the question of how HRI research can continue in an environment where physical distancing is the most effective approach to containing the spread of the disease. In this paper we present a pilot study that indicates that Remote-HRI (R-HRI) studies can be a feasible alternative. The results suggest, importantly, that whether the participant interacts with the robot in-person (but physically-distanced) or remotely, their perception of the robots is unaffected. We observed increased effort and frustration by participants when interacting remotely with the robot – for which there may be an underlying cultural cause. However, all participants completed their tasks with the robot and had a neutral to positive experience using it

Mattoid Wall Climber [wall-climbing robot]

Wallybot Robotics’ first research and development project, Mattoid, is a light-weight, durable, fully autonomous robot, designed to explore the possibility of creating wall scaling robots with passive adhesives. Our main goals will be mobility in two dimensions on horizontal and vertical surfaces, but our design will be physically capable of negotiating “inside corners” up to 90 degrees. This “inside” corner challenge or especially a transition from a vertical to horizontal surface is an important development and non-trivial task.&nbsp

A bacteriophage mimic of the bacterial nucleoid-associated protein Fis

We report the identification and characterization of a bacteriophage λ-encoded protein, NinH. Sequence homology suggests similarity between NinH and Fis, a bacterial nucleoid-associated protein involved in numerous DNA topology manipulations, including chromosome condensation, transcriptional regulation and phage site-specific recombination. We find that NinH functions as a homodimer and is able to bind and bend double-stranded DNA in vitro. Furthermore, NinH shows a preference for a 15 bp signature sequence related to the degenerate consensus favored by Fis. Structural studies reinforced the proposed similarity to Fis and supported identification of residues involved in DNA binding which were demonstrated experimentally. Overexpression of NinH proved toxic and this correlated with its capacity to associate with DNA. NinH is the first example of a phage-encoded Fis-like nucleoid-associated protein that likely influences phage excision-integration reactions or bacterial gene expression