Understanding the neural mechanisms of empathy toward robots to shape future applications

This article provides an overview on how modern neuroscience evaluations link to robot empathy. It evaluates the brain correlates of empathy and caregiving, and how they may be related to the higher functions with an emphasis on women. We discuss that the understanding of the brain correlates can inform the development of social robots with enhanced empathy and caregiving abilities. We propose that the availability of these robots will benefit many aspects of the society including transition to parenthood and parenting, in which women are deeply involved in real life and scientific research. We conclude with some of the barriers for women in the field and how robotics and robot empathy research benefits from a broad representation of researchers

Humans and Robots in Times of Quarantine Based on First-Hand Accounts

A quarantine is an effective measure in order to contain a disease and it is needed to be used more often in current times. Quarantine forces people to have minimal to no social contact with other humans for a certain period of time. Past work says this isolation can have a serious psychological impact on people’s lives, which can have dramatic consequences. Research can help find the positive and negative experiences of people in quarantine, in order to determine their needs. But how do people respond to quarantine according to their own self accounts? We look to a video platform as a unique opportunity to explore this question. Robots can be used in times of quarantine so isolation can be maintained. However, these robots should be matching the actual needs of the people in quarantine in order to have an effect. This research will use a content analysis of first-hand accounts of people in quarantine in order to find their experiences and needs. After that, there will be an analysis of robots that are used in times of quarantine. Lastly, these two analyses will be used to find out if the robots match the needs of the people in quarantine. We report on two major components to first-hand social media quarantine accounts: emotional response and procedural explanations provided by detainees, and explore potential reasons for them choosing to share these types of content. On top of that, we report on robots that are mentioned by social media, the tasks that they do, and the needs they fulfill. This research will expand on the current knowledge domain of needs in quarantine and will also add to the knowledge domain of the effectiveness of robots in quarantine

Legibility of robot approach trajectories with minimum jerk path planning

When a robot approaches a person, the chosen trajectory ideally informs the person not only about the robot’s intended target location, but also its intended orientation. However, planning a straight line to the goal location does not guarantee a correct final orientation, potentially causing confusion as the robot eventually rotates towards its unsuspecting target. One method that could remedy this problem is minimum jerk path planning, which results in the smoothest possible path that ends in the pre-specified final orientation. The technique is already widely used in robotic arm motion planning, but existing work is lacking for regular path planning. The aim of the current study is to implement minimum jerk path planning for the Nao robot and to evaluate the potential benefit for human observers to infer the intended target of the robot. Results show that minimum jerk path planning significantly improves people’s recognition of the robot’s destination compared to straight line path planning. Meanwhile, the perceived likeability and human likeness of the robot remain the same, suggesting that implementing smooth robot path planning that includes the final orientation leads to more predictable robot approaching behaviour. Keywords Human-aware navigation Path planning Robot intention Human-robot interactio