Stereotypical nationality representations in HRI: perspectives from international young adults

People often form immediate expectations about other people, or groups of people, based on visual appearance and characteristics of their voice and speech. These stereotypes, often inaccurate or overgeneralized, may translate to robots that carry human-like qualities. This study aims to explore if nationality-based preconceptions regarding appearance and accents can be found in people’s perception of a virtual and a physical social robot. In an online survey with 80 subjects evaluating different first-language-influenced accents of English and nationality-influenced human-like faces for a virtual robot, we find that accents, in particular, lead to preconceptions on perceived competence and likeability that correspond to previous findings in social science research. In a physical interaction study with 74 participants, we then studied if the perception of competence and likeability is similar after interacting with a robot portraying one of four different nationality representations from the online survey. We find that preconceptions on national stereotypes that appeared in the online survey vanish or are overshadowed by factors related to general interaction quality. We do, however, find some effects of the robot’s stereotypical alignment with the subject group, with Swedish subjects (the majority group in this study) rating the Swedish-accented robot as less competent than the international group, but, on the other hand, recalling more facts from the Swedish robot’s presentation than the international group does. In an extension in which the physical robot was replaced by a virtual robot interacting in the same scenario online, we further found the same results that preconceptions are of less importance after actual interactions, hence demonstrating that the differences in the ratings of the robot between the online survey and the interaction is not due to the interaction medium. We hence conclude that attitudes towards stereotypical national representations in HRI have a weak effect, at least for the user group included in this study (primarily educated young students in an international setting)

Adaptive Robot Presenters : Modelling Grounding in Multimodal Interaction

This thesis addresses the topic of grounding in human-robot interaction, that is, the process by which the human and robot can ensure mutual understanding. To explore this topic, the scenario of a robot holding a presentation to a human audience is used, where the robot has to process multimodal feedback from the human in order to adapt the presentation to the human's level of understanding. First, the use of behaviour trees to model real-time interactive processes of the presentation is addressed. A system based on the behaviour tree architecture is used in a semi-automated Wizard-of-oz experiment, showing that audience members prefer an adaptive system to a non-adaptive alternative. Next, the thesis addresses the use of knowledge graphs to represent the content of the presentation given by the robot. By building a small, local knowledge graph containing properties (edges) that represent facts about the presentation, the system can iterate over that graph and consistently find ways to refer to entities by referring to previously grounded content. A system based on this architecture is implemented, and an evaluation using simulated users is presented. The results show that crowdworkers comparing different adaptation strategies are sensitive to the types of adaptation enabled by the knowledge graph approach. In a face-to-face presentation setting, feedback from the audience can potentially be expressed through various modalities, including speech, head movements, gaze, facial gestures and body pose. The thesis explores how such feedback can be automatically classified. A corpus of human-robot interactions is annotated, and models are trained to classify human feedback as positive, negative or neutral. A relatively high accuracy is achieved by training simple classifiers with signals found mainly in the speech and head movements. When knowledge graphs are used as the underlying representation of the system's presentation, some consistent way of generating text, that can be turned into speech, is required. This graph-to-text problem is explored by proposing several methods, both template-based and methods based on zero-shot generation using large language models (LLMs). A novel evaluation method using a combination of factual, counter-factual and fictional graphs is proposed.  Finally, the thesis presents and evaluates a fully automated system using all of the components above. The results show that audience members prefer the adaptive system to a non-adaptive system, matching the results from the beginning of the thesis. However, we note that clear learning results are not found, which means that the entertainment aspects of the presentation are perhaps more prominent than the learning aspects.Denna avhandling behandlar ämnet multimodal kommunikativ grundning (grounding) mellan robotar och människor. Detta är processen för hur en människa och en robot kan säkerställa att de har en gemensam förståelse. För att utforska detta ämne ämne, används ett scenario där en robot håller en presentation för en mänsklig publik. Roboten måste analysera multimodala signaler från människan för att anpassa presentationen till människans nivå av förståelse. Först undersöks hur beteendeträd kan användas för att modellera realtidsaspekterna av interaktionen mellan robotpresentatören och dess publik. Ett system som baseras på beteendeträdsarkitekturen används i ett delvis automatiskt, delvis människostyrt experiment, där det visas att publikmedlemmar i labbmiljö föredrar ett system som anpassar presentationen till deras reaktioner över ett som inte anpassar sin presentation. Efter detta, urdersöker också avhandlingen hur kunskapsgrafer kan användas för att representera innehållet som roboten presenterar. Om en liten, lokal kunskapsgraf byggs så att den innehåller relationer (kanter) som representerar fakta i presentationen, så kan roboten iterera över grafen och konsekvent hitta refererande uttryck som använder sig av kunskap som publiken redan har. Ett system som baseras på denna arkitektur implementeras, och ett experiment med simulerade interaktioner utförs och presenteras. Experimentets resultat visar att utvärderare som jämför olika anpassningsstrategier föredrar ett system som kan utföra den sortens anpassning som grafmetoden tillåter.  Publikens reaktioner i ett presentationsscenario kan ske genom olika modaliteter, som tal, huvudrörelser, blickriktning, ansiktsuttryck och kroppsspråk. För att klassificera kommunikativ återmatning (feedback) av dessa modaliteter från presentationspubliken, utforskas hur sådana signaler kan analyseras automatiskt. En datamängd med interaktioner mellan en människa och vår robot annoteras, och statistiska modeller tränas för att klassificera mänskliga återmatningssignaler från flera olika modaliteter som positiva, negativa eller neutrala. En jämförelsevis hög klassifikationsprecision uppnås genom att träna enklare klassifikationsmodeller på relativt få klasser av signaler i tal- och huvudrörelsemodaliteterna. Detta antyder att museiscenariot med en robotpresentatör inte uppmuntrar publiken att använda komplicerade, mångtydiga kommunikativa beteenden. När kunskapsgrafer används som presentationssystemets informationsrepresentation, behövs det konsekventa metoder för att generera text som kan omvandlas till tal, från grafdata. Graf-till-text-problemet utforskas genom att föreslå flera olika metoder, både enklare mall-baserade sådana och mer avancerade metoder baserade på stora språkmodeller (LLM:er). Genom att föreslå en ny utvärderingsmetod där sanna, fiktiva och falska grafer genereras, visar vi också att sanningshalten i vad som uttrycks påverkar kvaliteten i texten som LLM-metoderna ger från kunskapsgrafdata. Avhandlingen använder sig slutligen av alla de ovanstående föreslagna komponenterna i ett och samma helautomatiska presentationssystem. Resultaten visar att publikmedlemmar föredrar ett system som anpassar sin presentation över ett som inte anpassar sin presentation, vilket speglar resultaten från början av avhandlingen. Vi ser också att tydliga inlärningsresultat uteblir i detta experiment, vilket kanske kan tolkas som att publikmedlemmarna i museiscenariot snarare letar efter en underhållare än efter en lärare som presentatör.QC 20231017</p

Adaptive Robot Presenters : Modelling Grounding in Multimodal Interaction

This thesis addresses the topic of grounding in human-robot interaction, that is, the process by which the human and robot can ensure mutual understanding. To explore this topic, the scenario of a robot holding a presentation to a human audience is used, where the robot has to process multimodal feedback from the human in order to adapt the presentation to the human's level of understanding. First, the use of behaviour trees to model real-time interactive processes of the presentation is addressed. A system based on the behaviour tree architecture is used in a semi-automated Wizard-of-oz experiment, showing that audience members prefer an adaptive system to a non-adaptive alternative. Next, the thesis addresses the use of knowledge graphs to represent the content of the presentation given by the robot. By building a small, local knowledge graph containing properties (edges) that represent facts about the presentation, the system can iterate over that graph and consistently find ways to refer to entities by referring to previously grounded content. A system based on this architecture is implemented, and an evaluation using simulated users is presented. The results show that crowdworkers comparing different adaptation strategies are sensitive to the types of adaptation enabled by the knowledge graph approach. In a face-to-face presentation setting, feedback from the audience can potentially be expressed through various modalities, including speech, head movements, gaze, facial gestures and body pose. The thesis explores how such feedback can be automatically classified. A corpus of human-robot interactions is annotated, and models are trained to classify human feedback as positive, negative or neutral. A relatively high accuracy is achieved by training simple classifiers with signals found mainly in the speech and head movements. When knowledge graphs are used as the underlying representation of the system's presentation, some consistent way of generating text, that can be turned into speech, is required. This graph-to-text problem is explored by proposing several methods, both template-based and methods based on zero-shot generation using large language models (LLMs). A novel evaluation method using a combination of factual, counter-factual and fictional graphs is proposed.  Finally, the thesis presents and evaluates a fully automated system using all of the components above. The results show that audience members prefer the adaptive system to a non-adaptive system, matching the results from the beginning of the thesis. However, we note that clear learning results are not found, which means that the entertainment aspects of the presentation are perhaps more prominent than the learning aspects.Denna avhandling behandlar ämnet multimodal kommunikativ grundning (grounding) mellan robotar och människor. Detta är processen för hur en människa och en robot kan säkerställa att de har en gemensam förståelse. För att utforska detta ämne ämne, används ett scenario där en robot håller en presentation för en mänsklig publik. Roboten måste analysera multimodala signaler från människan för att anpassa presentationen till människans nivå av förståelse. Först undersöks hur beteendeträd kan användas för att modellera realtidsaspekterna av interaktionen mellan robotpresentatören och dess publik. Ett system som baseras på beteendeträdsarkitekturen används i ett delvis automatiskt, delvis människostyrt experiment, där det visas att publikmedlemmar i labbmiljö föredrar ett system som anpassar presentationen till deras reaktioner över ett som inte anpassar sin presentation. Efter detta, urdersöker också avhandlingen hur kunskapsgrafer kan användas för att representera innehållet som roboten presenterar. Om en liten, lokal kunskapsgraf byggs så att den innehåller relationer (kanter) som representerar fakta i presentationen, så kan roboten iterera över grafen och konsekvent hitta refererande uttryck som använder sig av kunskap som publiken redan har. Ett system som baseras på denna arkitektur implementeras, och ett experiment med simulerade interaktioner utförs och presenteras. Experimentets resultat visar att utvärderare som jämför olika anpassningsstrategier föredrar ett system som kan utföra den sortens anpassning som grafmetoden tillåter.  Publikens reaktioner i ett presentationsscenario kan ske genom olika modaliteter, som tal, huvudrörelser, blickriktning, ansiktsuttryck och kroppsspråk. För att klassificera kommunikativ återmatning (feedback) av dessa modaliteter från presentationspubliken, utforskas hur sådana signaler kan analyseras automatiskt. En datamängd med interaktioner mellan en människa och vår robot annoteras, och statistiska modeller tränas för att klassificera mänskliga återmatningssignaler från flera olika modaliteter som positiva, negativa eller neutrala. En jämförelsevis hög klassifikationsprecision uppnås genom att träna enklare klassifikationsmodeller på relativt få klasser av signaler i tal- och huvudrörelsemodaliteterna. Detta antyder att museiscenariot med en robotpresentatör inte uppmuntrar publiken att använda komplicerade, mångtydiga kommunikativa beteenden. När kunskapsgrafer används som presentationssystemets informationsrepresentation, behövs det konsekventa metoder för att generera text som kan omvandlas till tal, från grafdata. Graf-till-text-problemet utforskas genom att föreslå flera olika metoder, både enklare mall-baserade sådana och mer avancerade metoder baserade på stora språkmodeller (LLM:er). Genom att föreslå en ny utvärderingsmetod där sanna, fiktiva och falska grafer genereras, visar vi också att sanningshalten i vad som uttrycks påverkar kvaliteten i texten som LLM-metoderna ger från kunskapsgrafdata. Avhandlingen använder sig slutligen av alla de ovanstående föreslagna komponenterna i ett och samma helautomatiska presentationssystem. Resultaten visar att publikmedlemmar föredrar ett system som anpassar sin presentation över ett som inte anpassar sin presentation, vilket speglar resultaten från början av avhandlingen. Vi ser också att tydliga inlärningsresultat uteblir i detta experiment, vilket kanske kan tolkas som att publikmedlemmarna i museiscenariot snarare letar efter en underhållare än efter en lärare som presentatör.QC 20231017</p

Using Large Language Models for Zero-Shot Natural Language Generation from Knowledge Graphs

In any system that uses structured knowledge graph (KG) data as its underlying knowledge representation, KG-to-text generation is a useful tool for turning parts of the graph data into text that can be understood by humans. Recent work has shown that models that make use of pretraining on large amounts of text data can perform well on the KG-to-text task even with relatively small sets of training data on the specific graph-to-text task. In this paper, we build on this concept by using large language models to perform zero-shot generation based on nothing but the model's understanding of the triple structure from what it can read. We show that ChatGPT achieves near state-of-the-art performance on some measures of the WebNLG 2020 challenge, but falls behind on others. Additionally, we compare factual, counter-factual and fictional statements, and show that there is a significant connection between what the LLM already knows about the data it is parsing and the quality of the output text.Comment: 8 pages, 3 pages appendices, 1 figure, 4 tables (incl. appendices

Insekter som proteinkälla i hundfoder

Traditionella proteinkällor innebär en påfrestning på miljön i form av utsläpp samt vatten- och markanvändning. Insekter är en uppmärksammad proteinkälla med lägre klimatpåverkan och inkluderas idag i hundmatsbranschen. Dessa marknadsförs även som fördelaktiga vid allergi. Därav syftar denna litteraturstudie att presentera hur väl hunden kan nyttja näringsinnehållet i de vanligaste insektsbaserade proteinkällorna och redogöra för dess eventuella fördelar vid allergi. Underlaget för studien selekterades huvudsakligen genom en formulerad sökfråga och flertal olika plattformar för vetenskapligt material. Även relevant facklitteratur inkluderades. Litteraturstudien fann att tolv olika insektsarter används, eller analyseras för att vidare inkluderas, i hundfoder. Dessa är arter av flugor, fjärilar, mjölmaskar, kackerlackor, skalbaggar och syrsor. Näringsinnehållet varierar källorna emellan men gemensamt besitter de höga proteinhalter. Samtliga arter med tillräckligt dokumenterat underlag innehöll tillräcklig halt aminosyror för att uppfylla hundens dagliga behov. De flesta insekter hade även en tillfredsställande smältbarhet av proteinet. Även insekternas fettinnehåll är högt vilket kan påverka avföringens kvalité, en aspekt som påverkar hundägarens inställning till fodermedlet. Litteraturen menar dock på att avföringskvalitén vid insektsprotein är likvärdig eller bättre i jämförelse med kontrollfoder. Marknadsföringen av insektsbaserade hundfoder understryker insekternas roll som exotisk proteinkälla, alltså ett protein immunförsvaret inte påträffat och därmed inte utvecklat antikroppar mot. Endast två publicerade studier inkluderade data om effekterna på allergi. Den första undersökningen såg en signifikant förbättring av allergiorsakade hudsymtom vid utfodring med insektsprotein i jämförelse med kontrolldieten. Nästa studie talade istället för risk för korsreaktion vid kvalsterallergi och insektsfoder. Slutligen finner denna studie stora möjligheter gällande insektsproteinets framtid i form av bland annat ytterligare lägre miljöpåverkan samt ett ökat intresse och villighet att inkludera insektsprotein i foder liksom livsmedel. Ytterligare analyser och studier krävs gällande proteinkällorna s innehåll och kvalité likväl deras egentliga roll vid allergier. Detta för ett säkert användande av insekter i fodermedel.Traditional sources of protein in dog food contributes to an environmental impact, not only through climate gas emissions, but also by water- and land use. Insects are alleged to be a more environmentally friendly protein source which is included in the dog food industry. They are also marketed as beneficial in allergies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to present how well dogs can utilize the nutritional content of the most common insect-based protein sources as well as account for its possible benefits in allergies. The basis for the study was selected mainly through a formulated search query and several different platforms for scientific material. Relevant specialist literature was also included. The literature review revealed that twelve different insect species are used, or analyzed to be further included, in dog food. These are species of flies, butterflies, meal worms, cockroaches, beetles and crickets. The nutrient content varies between the sources but they all possess high protein contents. All species with sufficiently documented data contained enough amino acids to meet the dog's daily needs. Most of the insects had an adequate protein digestibility. The fat content of insects is also high, which can affect the quality of the faeces, an aspect that affects the dog owner's attitude towards the feed. However, the literature suggests that the stool quality of insect protein is equivalent, or even better, in comparison with control feed. The marketing of insect-based dog food emphasizes the role of insects as an exotic source of protein, a protein the immune system has not yet encountered. Hence antibodies have not developed and a reaction is absent. Only two published studies included data regarding effects on allergy. The first study saw a significant improvement in dermal symptoms caused by allergies when fed insect protein, compared to the control diet. The next study instead addressed a risk of cross-reaction with mite allergy and insect food. In conclusion, this study finds great opportunities regarding the future of insect protein among different aspects, such as further lower environmental impact and an increased interest and willingness to include insect protein in feed as well as in food. Further analyzes and studies are required regarding the content and quality of these protein sources as well as their actual role in allergies. This is for the safe usage of insects in animal feed

Multimodal User Feedback During Adaptive Robot-Human Presentations

Feedback is an essential part of all communication, and agents communicating with humans must be able to both give and receive feedback in order to ensure mutual understanding. In this paper, we analyse multimodal feedback given by humans towards a robot that is presenting a piece of art in a shared environment, similar to a museum setting. The data analysed contains both video and audio recordings of 28 participants, and the data has been richly annotated both in terms of multimodal cues (speech, gaze, head gestures, facial expressions, and body pose), as well as the polarity of any feedback (negative, positive, or neutral). We train statistical and machine learning models on the dataset, and find that random forest models and multinomial regression models perform well on predicting the polarity of the participants' reactions. An analysis of the different modalities shows that most information is found in the participants' speech and head gestures, while much less information is found in their facial expressions, body pose and gaze. An analysis of the timing of the feedback shows that most feedback is given when the robot makes pauses (and thereby invites feedback), but that the more exact timing of the feedback does not affect its meaning.QC 20220112 QC 20220216Co-adaptive Human-Robot Interactive System

Using Large Language Models for Zero-Shot Natural Language Generation from Knowledge Graphs

In any system that uses structured knowledgegraph (KG) data as its underlying knowledge representation, KG-to-text generation is a useful tool for turning parts of the graph data into text that can be understood by humans. Recent work has shown that models that make use of pretraining on large amounts of text data can perform well on the KG-to-text task, even with relatively little training data on the specific graph-to-text task. In this paper, we build on this concept by using large language models to perform zero-shot generation based on nothing but the model’s understanding of the triple structure from what it can read. We show that ChatGPT achieves near state-of-the-art performance on some measures of the WebNLG 2020 challenge, but falls behind on others. Additionally, we compare factual, counter-factual and fictional statements, and show that there is a significant connection between what the LLM already knows about the data it is parsing and the quality of the output text.QC 20231017Social robots accelerating the transition to sustainable transport (50276-1

Using Large Language Models for Zero-Shot Natural Language Generation from Knowledge Graphs

In any system that uses structured knowledgegraph (KG) data as its underlying knowledge representation, KG-to-text generation is a useful tool for turning parts of the graph data into text that can be understood by humans. Recent work has shown that models that make use of pretraining on large amounts of text data can perform well on the KG-to-text task, even with relatively little training data on the specific graph-to-text task. In this paper, we build on this concept by using large language models to perform zero-shot generation based on nothing but the model’s understanding of the triple structure from what it can read. We show that ChatGPT achieves near state-of-the-art performance on some measures of the WebNLG 2020 challenge, but falls behind on others. Additionally, we compare factual, counter-factual and fictional statements, and show that there is a significant connection between what the LLM already knows about the data it is parsing and the quality of the output text.QC 20231017Social robots accelerating the transition to sustainable transport (50276-1

Modeling feedback in interaction with conversational agents—A review

Axelsson A, Buschmeier H, Skantze G. Modeling feedback in interaction with conversational agents—A review. Frontiers in Computer Science. 2022;4: 744574.Intelligent agents interacting with humans through conversation (such as a robot, embodied conversational agent, or chatbot) need to receive feedback from the human to make sure that its communicative acts have the intended consequences. At the same time, the human interacting with the agent will also seek feedback, in order to ensure that her communicative acts have the intended consequences. In this review article, we give an overview of past and current research on how intelligent agents should be able to both give meaningful feedback toward humans, as well as understanding feedback given by the users. The review covers feedback across different modalities (e.g., speech, head gestures, gaze, and facial expression), different forms of feedback (e.g., backchannels, clarification requests), and models for allowing the agent to assess the user's level of understanding and adapt its behavior accordingly. Finally, we analyse some shortcomings of current approaches to modeling feedback, and identify important directions for future research