The impact of peoples' personal dispositions and personalities on their trust of robots in an emergency scenario

Humans should be able to trust that they can safely interact with their home companion robot. However, robots can exhibit occasional mechanical, programming or functional errors. We hypothesise that the severity of the consequences and the timing of a robot's different types of erroneous behaviours during an interaction may have different impacts on users' attitudes towards a domestic robot. First, we investigated human users' perceptions of the severity of various categories of potential errors that are likely to be exhibited by a domestic robot. Second, we used an interactive storyboard to evaluate participants' degree of trust in the robot after it performed tasks either correctly, or with 'small' or 'big' errors. Finally, we analysed the correlation between participants' responses regarding their personality, predisposition to trust other humans, their perceptions of robots, and their interaction with the robot. We conclude that there is correlation between the magnitude of an error performed by a robot and the corresponding loss of trust by the human towards the robot. Moreover we observed that some traits of participants' personalities (conscientiousness and agreeableness) and their disposition of trusting other humans (benevolence) significantly increased their tendency to trust a robot more during an emergency scenario.Peer reviewe

Does the Appearance of a Robot Influence People's Perception of Task Criticality?

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.As home robot companions become more common, it is important to understand what types of tasks are considered critical to perform correctly. This paper provides working definitions of task criticality, physical and cognitive tasks with respect to robot task performance. Our research also suggests that although people's perceptions of task criticality is independent of robot appearances, their expectation that a robot performs tasks correctly is affected by it's appearance

Skin Segmentation and Skull Segmentation for Medical Imaging

In this paper aims we present tools for medical imaging applications to do skin and skull segmentation in a short time. The desired output for skin segmentation is a 3D visualization of the facial skin without any cavities or holes inside the head, while skull segmentation aims to create a 3D visualization of the skull bones. The algorithm used for skin segmentation is thresholding the image, extracting the largest connected component, and holefilling to fill the unnecessary holes. As for the skull segmentation, the process is done by removing the spines which is connected to the skull, and then extracting the largest connected component. Afterwards, mesh generation is done to produce the 3D objects from the processed images. This mesh generation process is done using the marching cubes algorithm. The testing results show that the skin and skull segmentation process will work well when there are no other objects that are connected to the skin or the skull. Skin segmentation process takes a significant amount of time, primarily caused by the holefilling process

Column studies of copper(II) and nickel(II) ions sorption on palm pressed fibres

The efficiency of palm pressed fibres (PPF) in removing copper(II) and nickel(II) ions from solution was investigated in column experiments. Homogeneous column studies show that metal sorption increased with lower flow rate, higher bed-depth and lower metal ion concentration. Bed-depth service time (BDST) studies show that the results agree with the BDST model proposed by Hutchins [1]. The mixed media studies using sand-soil PPF combination demonstrated that PPF can be an efficient sorbent in the prevention of leaching of metal ions in landfill

Removal of reactive dyes by quaternized coconut husk

Coconut husk modified through the use of N-(3-chloro-2-hydroxypropyl)- trimethylammonium chloride was evaluated for its ability to remove reactive dyes from aqueous solution. Sorption of dyes was pH dependent and favorable sorption occurred at low pH. In contrast, natural coconut husk showed very little uptake of these reactive dyes. The maximum sorption capacities of the modified coconut husks for Reactive Blue 2, Reactive Yellow 2, Reactive Orange 16 and Reactive Blue 4 were 128.9, 182.2, 254.5 and 423.7 mg/g respectively. Column experiments using textile effluent showed that the reactive and disperse dyes in the effluent could be successfully removed

A matter of consequences : Understanding the effects of robot errors on people's trust in HRI

© John Benjamins Publishing Company. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1075/is.21025.rosOn reviewing the literature regarding acceptance and trust in human-robot interaction (HRI), there are a number of open questions that needed to be addressed in order to establish effective collaborations between humans and robots in real-world applications. In particular, we identified four principal open areas that should be investigated to create guidelines for the successful deployment of robots in the wild. These areas are focused on: (1) the robot's abilities and limitations; in particular when it makes errors with different severity of consequences, (2) individual differences, (3) the dynamics of human-robot trust, and (4) the interaction between humans and robots over time. In this paper, we present two very similar studies, one with a virtual robot with human-like abilities, and one with a Care-O-bot 4 robot. In the first study, we create an immersive narrative using an interactive storyboard to collect responses of 154 participants. In the second study, 6 participants had repeated interactions over three weeks with a physical robot. We summarise and discuss the findings of our investigations of the effects of robots' errors on people's trust in robots for designing mechanisms that allow robots to recover from a breach of trust. In particular, we observed that robots' errors had greater impact on people's trust in the robot when the errors were made at the beginning of the interaction and had severe consequences. Our results also provided insights on how these errors vary according to the individuals' personalities, expectations and previous experiences.Peer reviewe

Subnanosecond spectral diffusion of a single quantum dot in a nanowire

We have studied spectral diffusion of the photoluminescence of a single CdSe quantum dot inserted in a ZnSe nanowire. We have measured the characteristic diffusion time as a function of pumping power and temperature using a recently developed technique [G. Sallen et al, Nature Photon. \textbf{4}, 696 (2010)] that offers subnanosecond resolution. These data are consistent with a model where only a \emph{single} carrier wanders around in traps located in the vicinity of the quantum dot

Lost in translation: how can education about dementia be effectively integrated into medical school contexts? A realist synthesis

\ua9 Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. OBJECTIVES: The prevalence of dementia in both community and hospital settings requires a clinical workforce that is skilled in diagnosis and management of the condition to competently care for patients. Though evidence of successful educational interventions about dementia exists, effective translation into medical school curricula is the exception rather than the norm. DESIGN: We adopted a realist synthesis approach following Realist And MEta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards (RAMESES) guidelines to answer the following questions: (1) what are the barriers to integrating effective interventions about dementia into medical school curricula and (2) where they are successfully delivered, what are the contextual factors that allow for this enactment? DATA SOURCES: We searched PubMed, Embase, CINAHL and PsycINFO using the MesH terms Schools, Medical; Students, Medical; Education, Medical AND Neurocognitive disorders or the closest possible set of terms within each database. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Undergraduate or graduate entry medical school programme, teaching and learning focussing on dementia, evaluating student outcomes (satisfaction, knowledge, skills, attitudes or behaviours), interventions described clearly enough to classify teaching method, any research design (quantitative and qualitative), English language. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: We used a shared spreadsheet to enter key information about eligible studies and the reasons for excluding studies that did not fit eligibility criteria. We extracted descriptive data about the nature of educational interventions and narrative information as to barriers and facilitators to implementing those interventions. RESULTS: Our initial literature search identified 16 relevant papers for review. Systematic extraction of data informed the development of an initial programme theory (IPT) structured around four contextual barriers: \u27culture\u27, \u27concern for patient welfare\u27, \u27student attitudes\u27 and \u27logistics\u27 with associated facilitatory mechanisms embed medical education about dementia. CONCLUSIONS: We outline the process of generating our IPT, including overlap with Cultural Historical Activity Theory. We outline our intention to refine our programme theory through ongoing review of the evidence base and collaboration with stakeholders, with the aim of finalising a model for successful integration of dementia education

A matter of consequences: Understanding the effects of robot errors on people's trust in HRI

On reviewing the literature regarding acceptance and trust in human-robot interaction (HRI), there are a number of open questions that needed to be addressed in order to establish effective collaborations between humans and robots in real-world applications. In particular, we identified four principal open areas that should be investigated to create guidelines for the successful deployment of robots in the wild. These areas are focused on: 1) the robot's abilities and limitations; in particular when it makes errors with different severity of consequences, 2) individual differences, 3) the dynamics of human-robot trust, and 4) the interaction between humans and robots over time. In this paper, we present two very similar studies, one with a virtual robot with human-like abilities, and one with a Care-O-bot 4 robot. In the first study, we create an immersive narrative using an interactive storyboard to collect responses of 154 participants. In the second study, 6 participants had repeated interactions over three weeks with a physical robot. We summarise and discuss the findings of our investigations of the effects of robots' errors on people's trust in robots for designing mechanisms that allow robots to recover from a breach of trust. In particular, we observed that robots' errors had greater impact on people's trust in the robot when the errors were made at the beginning of the interaction and had severe consequences. Our results also provided insights on how these errors vary according to the individuals’ personalities, expectations and previous experiences

Is Problem Solving and Systems Thinking Related? A Case Study in a Malaysian University

Does systems thinking facilitate the acquisition of important skills in solving ill-defined problems? This exploratory study seeks to investigate whether an association exists between problem-solving and informal systems-thinking skills. A survey methodology that included a paper and pencil test was used to gather data. Four performance tasks designed and adapted to local context were employed to measure both sets of skills. Following that, the performance of each respondent was scored based on an analytical scoring rubric. Both descriptive and inferential data analysis involving comparisons of the populations and checking for correlations were carried out. Findings indicated that the respondents performed poorly in all the tasks. The mean score for systems thinking was found to be lower than that of problem solving. These skills were analysed according to three preselected demographics. Interestingly, the data indicated that there was a positive but moderate association between problem-solving and systems-thinking skills. The limitations and some general recommendations for future research were also discussed