Does anyone want to talk to me? : Reflections on the use of assistance and companion robots in care homes

Held at the AISB'15 ConventionFinal Accepted Versio

A template based user-teaching system for an Assistive Robot

Demographics issues, characterised by an increasing elderly population, are expected to be a major concern both in Europe and other countries around the world. A proposed cost and care solution to these issues has been suggested that uses assistive robots in 'smarthome' environments. The deployment of such integrated facilities presents many challenges, one of which concerns the customisation of such systems to meet the needs of the elderly person themselves. One approach is to allow the elderly person to actually teach the robot sufficient behaviours that meet their care requirements. The teaching could equally well be carried out by the elderly person's relatives or carers. The overriding premise being that teaching is both intuitive and 'non-technical'. As part of a European project investigating these issues we have deployed a commercially available robot in a fully sensorised but otherwise ordinary suburban house, and designed a non-technical teaching system, based on behavioural templates, to achieve this goal. We have evaluated this integrated system within the house with 20 participants in a Human-Robot interaction experiment. Results indicate that participants overall found the interface easy to use, and felt that they would be capable of using it in a real-life situation. There were also some salient individual differences within the sample

Differences on social acceptance of humanoid robots between Japan and the UK

Held at AISB'15 ConventionTo validate a questionnaire for measuring people's acceptance of humanoid robots in cross-cultural research (the Frankenstein Syndrome Questionnaire: FSQ), an online survey was conducted in both the UK and Japan including items on perceptions of the relation to the family and commitment to religions, and negative attitudes toward robots (the NARS). The results suggested that 1) the correlations between the FSQ subscale scores and NARS were sufficient, 2) the UK people felt more negative toward humanoid robots than did the Japanese people, 3) young UK people had more expectation for humanoid robots, 4) relationships between social acceptance of humanoid robots and negative attitudes toward robots in general were different between the nations and generations, and 5) there were no correlations between the FSQ subscale scores, and perception of the relation to the family and commitment to religions.Final Accepted Versio

Midwest China Oral History Interviews

Early Life: family background; education; went to China under the auspices of the Lutheran United Mission, 1929. China Experiences: Scandinavian interest in China missions; language training in Peking; lifestyle and evangelizing in and around Fancheng, Honan; description of various Chinese Christians living in Fancheng; military disturbances at Fancheng, early 1930s; the Bert Nelson affair; Communist activity in the Fancheng area; impressions of Chiang Kai-shek and Feng Yu-hsiang; anti-foreign sentiment in Sinyang; educational system at the mission school; response to gunboat policy; experience with revivalism of 1930s; impressions of ecumenism in China; memories of Peng Fu; response to a Lutheran college in China after WWII; Lutheran conceptions of the future of mission work in China after WWII; reasons for ordering evacuation of Lutheran missions from China as director of world missions for the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1948; lessons learned from missionary involvement in China.https://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/china_histories/1086/thumbnail.jp

A User study on visualization of agent migration between two companion robots

In order to provide continuous user assistance in different physical situations and circumstances, it is desirable that an agent can maintain its identity as it migrates between different physical embodiments. A user study was conducted, with 21 primary school students which investigated the use of three different visual cues to support the user's belief that they are still interacting with the same agent migrating between different robotic embodiments.Non peer reviewe

KASPAR in the wild - Initial findings from a pilot study

This extended abstract describes the initial pilot work when evaluating the use of the UH Humanoid Robot KASPAR in a specialist nursery for children with social and communication disorders. Staff and volunteers at the nursery were trained in the use of KASPAR and are currently using KASPAR in their day to day activities in the nursery. This paper focuses on the design and results from the initial interviews with the participants. Results high-light the challenges of transferring experimental technologies like KASPAR from a research setting into everyday practice

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

A Narrative Approach to Human-Robot Interaction Prototyping for Companion Robots

© 2020 Kheng Lee Koay et al., published by De Gruyter This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This paper presents a proof of concept prototype study for domestic home robot companions, using a narrative-based methodology based on the principles of immersive engagement and fictional enquiry, creating scenarios which are inter-connected through a coherent narrative arc, to encourage participant immersion within a realistic setting. The aim was to ground human interactions with this technology in a coherent, meaningful experience. Nine participants interacted with a robotic agent in a smart home environment twice a week over a month, with each interaction framed within a greater narrative arc. Participant responses, both to the scenarios and the robotic agents used within them are discussed, suggesting that the prototyping methodology was successful in conveying a meaningful interaction experience.Peer reviewe

The Platformisation Of Work In Europe: Results from research in 13 European countries

These data are from an innovative survey carried out fourteen times across thirteen European countries (with the United Kingdom being surveyed twice - in 2016 and 2019), revealing, for the first time, the extent and characteristics of platform workers. In the above mentioned reports, the survey results are complemented by in-depth interviews with a range of platform workers, shedding light on the realities of their working lives, including the stresses, fears and health hazards they face, as well as the satisfactions they experience. This joint research project was launched in January 2016. It was carried out by the University of Hertfordshire in association with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and UNI Europa, the European services workers union. Co-funding for national surveys was provided by Unionen in Sweden, the TNO Research Institute in the Netherlands, The Chamber of Labour (AK) in Austria, ver.di and IG Metall in Germany, syndicom in Switzerland, the Fondazione EYU in Italy, the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) in Estonia, the Kalevi Sorsa Foundation and Service Union United (PAM), in Finland, the Felipe Gonzalez Foundation in Spain, Progresiva in Slovenia, the Masarykova demokratická akademie and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung office in Prague in Czechia, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the UK and the Fondation Jean-Jaurès in France. Fieldwork for the 14 surveys in the 13 countries was carried out by Ipsos MORI between January 2016 and May 2019.Foundation For European Progressive StudiesTrades Union Congress (TUC

Midwest China Oral History Interviews

Early Life: family background; education; called by the Mission Board of the United Lutheran Church, 1929. China Experiences: description of year spent at Peking Language School; description of 1930 mission conference on Kikungshan; initial impressions of Fancheng; Communist activity in the Fancheng area; brief history of the Chu Hao-jan family; description of the I Kwang Middle School; registering I Kwang with the Nationalist government after 1927; biographical information on Dora Wang; biographical informationi on Marie Anderson; travelling in China during the 1930s; work on the second edition of White Unto Harvest; excerpts from letters written while living in China.https://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/china_histories/1085/thumbnail.jp