Would You Trust a (Faulty) Robot? : Effects of Error, Task Type and Personality on Human-Robot Cooperation and Trust

How do mistakes made by a robot affect its trustworthiness and acceptance in human-robot collaboration? We investigate how the perception of erroneous robot behavior may influence human interaction choices and the willingness to cooperate with the robot by following a number of its unusual requests. For this purpose, we conducted an experiment in which participants interacted with a home companion robot in one of two experimental conditions: (1) the correct mode or (2) the faulty mode. Our findings reveal that, while significantly affecting subjective perceptions of the robot and assessments of its reliability and trustworthiness, the robot's performance does not seem to substantially influence participants' decisions to (not) comply with its requests. However, our results further suggest that the nature of the task requested by the robot, e.g. whether its effects are revocable as opposed to irrevocable, has a signicant im- pact on participants' willingness to follow its instructions

Towards Safe and Trustworthy Social Robots : Ethical Challenges and Practical Issues

Maha Salem, Gabriella Lakatos, Farshid Amirabdollahian, K. Dautenhahn, ‘Towards Safe and Trustworthy Social Robots: Ethical Challenges and Practical Issues’, paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Social Robotics, Paris, France, 26-30 October, 2015.As robots are increasingly developed to assist humans so- cially with everyday tasks in home and healthcare settings, questions regarding the robot's safety and trustworthiness need to be addressed. The present work investigates the practical and ethical challenges in de- signing and evaluating social robots that aim to be perceived as safe and can win their human users' trust. With particular focus on collaborative scenarios in which humans are required to accept information provided by the robot and follow its suggestions, trust plays a crucial role and is strongly linked to persuasiveness. Accordingly, human-robot trust can directly aect people's willingness to cooperate with the robot, while under- or overreliance may have severe or even dangerous consequences. Problematically, investigating trust and human perceptions of safety in HRI experiments proves challenging in light of numerous ethical con- cerns and risks, which this paper aims to highlight and discuss based on experiences from HRI practice.Peer reviewe

The triple-mode pulsating variable V823 Cas

Based on extended multicolour CCD photometry of the triple-mode radial pulsator V823 Cas we studied the properties of the coupling frequencies invoked by nonlinear processes. Our results support that a resonance connection as suggested by Antonello & Aikawa (1998) affects the mode coupling behaviour. The P1/P0 period ratio of V823 Cas has an "out of range" value if compared with the period ratios of the known double mode pulsators, while the P2/P1 period ratio is normal. The periods and period ratios cannot be consistently interpret without conflict with pulsation and/or evolution models. We attempt to interpret this failure by the suggestion that at present, the periods of V823 Cas are in a transient, resonance affected state, thus do not reflect the true parameters of the object. The anomalous period change behaviour of the fundamental and second overtone modes supports this idea. We have also raised the possibility that a f0 + f2 = 2f1 resonance may act in triple mode pulsators.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Escape of a Uniform Random Walk from an Interval

We study the first-passage properties of a random walk in the unit interval in which the length of a single step is uniformly distributed over the finite range [-a,a]. For a of the order of one, the exit probabilities to each edge of the interval and the exit time from the interval exhibit anomalous properties stemming from the change in the minimum number of steps to escape the interval as a function of the starting point. As a decreases, first-passage properties approach those of continuum diffusion, but non-diffusive effects remain because of residual discreteness effectsComment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 column revtex4 forma

Distribution of dwell times of a ribosome: effects of infidelity, kinetic proofreading and ribosome crowding

Ribosome is a molecular machine that polymerizes a protein where the sequence of the amino acid residues, the monomers of the protein, is dictated by the sequence of codons (triplets of nucleotides) on a messenger RNA (mRNA) that serves as the template. The ribosome is a molecular motor that utilizes the template mRNA strand also as the track. Thus, in each step the ribosome moves forward by one codon and, simultaneously, elongates the protein by one amino acid. We present a theoretical model that captures most of the main steps in the mechano-chemical cycle of a ribosome. The stochastic movement of the ribosome consists of an alternating sequence of pause and translocation; the sum of the durations of a pause and the following translocation is the time of dwell of the ribosome at the corresponding codon. We derive the analytical expression for the distribution of the dwell times of a ribosome in our model. Whereever experimental data are available, our theoretical predictions are consistent with those results. We suggest appropriate experiments to test the new predictions of our model, particularly, the effects of the quality control mechanism of the ribosome and that of their crowding on the mRNA track.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physical Biology. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available online at DOI:10.1088/1478-3975/8/2/02600

The vegetation of the Meggyes Marsh in the starting phase of rehabilitation

In the middle of the last century enormous water regulation works were implemented in the flood plain of the River Tisza in order to open large areas for intensive agricultural production. In the recent past (1970s) agricultural amelioration has been the most significant of human-induced factors threatening the wetlands. Fortunately, the dominant wetland types have survived these unfavourable conditions. The remains of them are still of inestimable value for nature conservation, because alkaline marshes and shallow ponds have almost completely disappeared from other parts of Europe. Consequently, it is the basic duty of nature conservation to preserve or restore the residual natural or semi-natural wetlands, as well as to revive the one-time connections among units that have become separated from each other. Accordingly, Hortobagy National Park aims at restoring and maintaining the original water regime of the water-related habitats in order to arrive at the most natural conditions possible. Hydrobiological research on a rehabilitated marsh was started in 1996, the year of the first flooding, while in 1997 the investigations were completed with a vegetation survey. In the present paper, information is provided on the hydrobiological conditions observed in the area, and the principal botanical transformations of the flooded marsh are summarized. In the starting phase of the rehabilitation significant changes took place as the degraded homogenous vegetation became altered by - when considering species composition and structure - a more diverse type of vegetation. Both botanical and hydrobiological data indicated an alkaline marsh character

The vegetation of the Meggyes Marsh in the starting phase of rehabilitation

In the middle of the last century enormous water regulation works were implemented in the flood plain of the River Tisza in order to open large areas for intensive agricultural production. In the recent past (1970s) agricultural amelioration has been the most significant of human-induced factors threatening the wetlands. Fortunately, the dominant wetland types have survived these unfavourable conditions. The remains of them are still of inestimable value for nature conservation, because alkaline marshes and shallow ponds have almost completely disappeared from other parts of Europe. Consequently, it is the basic duty of nature conservation to preserve or restore the residual natural or semi-natural wetlands, as well as to revive the one-time connections among units that have become separated from each other. Accordingly, Hortobagy National Park aims at restoring and maintaining the original water regime of the water-related habitats in order to arrive at the most natural conditions possible. Hydrobiological research on a rehabilitated marsh was started in 1996, the year of the first flooding, while in 1997 the investigations were completed with a vegetation survey. In the present paper, information is provided on the hydrobiological conditions observed in the area, and the principal botanical transformations of the flooded marsh are summarized. In the starting phase of the rehabilitation significant changes took place as the degraded homogenous vegetation became altered by - when considering species composition and structure - a more diverse type of vegetation. Both botanical and hydrobiological data indicated an alkaline marsh character

Csirkeér mechanikai vizsgálata egyedi építésű kísérleti berendezéssel

A szív- és érrendszeri betegségek évtizedek óta tizedelik az emberiséget. Az erek in vivo vizsgálata nagy segítséget nyújt numerikus modellek és szimulációk fejlesztéséhez, amelyek segítségével az orvosok érdemben tudnak javítani az életminőségen. Az ilyen modellekhez az erek különböző mechanikai jellemzői a bemeneti adatok. Az erek több ilyen mechanikai tulajdonságának, például a rugalmassági modulusznak és szakítószilárdságnak, meghatározása szakítóvizsgálattal történik. Kutatásunk során egy erek kéttengelyű szakítására is alkalmas kísérleti berendezést fejlesztettünk és teszteltünk, amelyet csirkeerek vizsgálatán keresztül mutatunk be

The Blazhko behaviour of RR Geminorum I - CCD photometric results in 2004

Extended CCD monitoring of RR Gem revealed that it is a Blazhko type RRab star with the shortest Blazhko period (7.23d) and smallest modulation amplitude (Delta Mmax<0.1 mag) currently known. The short period of the modulation cycle enabled us to obtain complete phase coverage of the pulsation at each phase of the modulation. This is the first multicolour observation of a Blazhko star which is extended enough to define accurate mean magnitudes and colours of the variable at different Blazhko phases. Small, but real, changes in the intensity mean colours at different Blazhko phases have been detected. The Fourier analysis of the light curves shows that, in spite of the mmag and smaller order of the amplitudes, the triplet structure is noticeable up to about the 14th harmonic. The modulation is concentrated to a very narrow, 0.2 phase range of the pulsation, centred on the supposed onset of the H emission during rising light. These observational results raise further complications for theoretical explanation of the long known but poorly understood Blazhko phenomenon.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic