A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

ViSpec: A graphical tool for elicitation of MTL requirements

One of the main barriers preventing widespread use of formal methods is the elicitation of formal specifications. Formal specifications facilitate the testing and verification process for safety critical robotic systems. However, handling the intricacies of formal languages is difficult and requires a high level of expertise in formal logics that many system developers do not have. In this work, we present a graphical tool designed for the development and visualization of formal specifications by people that do not have training in formal logic. The tool enables users to develop specifications using a graphical formalism which is then automatically translated to Metric Temporal Logic (MTL). In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our tool, we have also designed and conducted a usability study with cohorts from the academic student community and industry. Our results indicate that both groups were able to define formal requirements with high levels of accuracy. Finally, we present applications of our tool for defining specifications for operation of robotic surgery and autonomous quadcopter safe operation.Comment: Technical report for the paper to be published in the 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems held in Hamburg, Germany. Includes 10 pages and 19 figure

La poética de Julio Cortázar : el universo neogótico en sus textos

Se ha disertado mucho sobre la vertiente fantástica en los cuentos de Julio Cortázar, una flexión verdaderamente preeminente en su proyecto narrativo y calificada con el prefijo "neo" como parte más amplia de la propuesta canonizada por Franz Kafka. No obstante, consideramos buena parte de esta prolífica producción como una evolución, darwiniamente hablando, de la flexión gótica de la literatura de terror a la que calificamos como neogótica, por analogía con el respectivo membrete relacionado con la evolución del género neofantástico. En el presente artículo exploramos dicha faceta del autor argentino proponiendo una lectura alternativa de sus cuentos desde esta perspectiva.The fantastic aspect of Julio Cortazar's short stories, a genre which is really preeminent in his narrative project and qualified by the prefix "neo" as part of the much wider proposal canonized by Franz Kafka, has been extensively discussed. Nevertheless, we consider a big part of this prolific production as an evolution, in the Darwinian sense, of the gothic genre of horror literature, which could as well be qualified as neo-gothic, by analogy with the evolution of the neo-fantastic genre. In this article we explore this facet of the Argentinian writer, proposing an alternative lecture on his short stories from this perspective

Complete information pivotal-voter model with asymmetric group size and asymmetric benefits

We analyse a standard pivotal-voter model under majority rule, with two rival groups of players, each preferring one of two public policies and simultaneously deciding whether to cast a costly vote, as in Palfrey and Rosenthal (1983). We allow the benefit of the favorite public policy to differ across groups and impose an intuitive refinement, namely that voting probabilities are continuous in the cost of voting to pin down a unique equilibrium. The unique continuous equilibrium depends on a key threshold that compares the sizes of the two groups

Complete information pivotal-voter model with asymmetric group size

We study the equilibria of the standard pivotal-voter participation game between two groups of voters of asymmetric sizes (majority and minority), as originally proposed by Palfrey and Rosenthal (Public Choice 41(1):7–53, 1983). We find a unique equilibrium wherein the minority votes with certainty and the majority votes with probability in (0,1); we prove that this is the only equilibrium in which voters of only one group play a pure strategy, and we provide sufficient conditions for its existence. Equilibria where voters of both groups vote with probability in (0, 1) are analyzed numerically

Essays in political economy

This thesis is comprised of three chapters. In the first chapter, I examine a voting model where two political parties have fixed positions on a unidimensional policy space but where the implemented policy is the convex combination of the two positions and study the effects of opinion polls on election results and social welfare. Voters are completely agnostic about the distribution of preferences and gain sequential and partial information through series of opinion polls. Voters' behavior is driven in part by regret minimization. The mass of undecided voters decreases monotonically with the number of polls, but may not necessarily disappear. Voters who remain undecided have centrist ideologies. Finally, social welfare is not necessarily increasing in the number of polls: having more polls is not always better. Features of the model are con firmed by empirical evidence. In the second chapter, which is a joint work with Agustin Casas and Guillermo Diaz, we evaluate the effect of an institutional provision designed to increase accountability of local officials, and we show that its implementation can lead to a distribution of power within the legislature which is not consistent with voters' true preferences. The cause of this inconsistency is the ballot design which asymmetrically affects the officials listed on it. We analyze the case of the Lima's 2013 city legislature recall referendum and show that the design of the referendum ballot had adverse and signifficant effects on the composition of the Lima's city legislature. We also show that the election results with more \neutral" ballot designs would have been signifficantly different, and the composition of the legislature would have been more representative of voters' true preferences. More specifically, we use our results to simulate the outcome of the election with a random order of candidates. Even though the voters' fatigue is still present, it affects all parties equally, obtaining a more faithful representation of the voters' preferences. Finally, the third chapter is a joint work with Marco Serena. For small electorates, the probability of casting the pivotal vote drives one's willingness to vote, however the existence of costs of voting incentivizes ones abstention. In two-alternative pivotal-voter models, this trade-off has been extensively studied under private information on the cost of voting. We complement the literature by providing an analysis under complete information, extending the analysis of Palfrey and Rosenthal [1983. A strategic calculus of voting. Public Choice. 41, 7-53]. If the cost of voting is sufficiently high at least for supporters of one of the two alternatives, the equilibrium is unique, and fully characterized. If instead the cost of voting is sufficiently low for everyone, we characterize three classes of equilibria and we find that all equilibria must belong to one of these three classes, regardless of the number of individuals. Furthermore we focus on equilibria which are continuous in the cost of voting. We show that this equilibrium refinement pins down a unique equilibrium. We conclude by discussing an application of our findings to redistribution of wealth.Polling in a Proportional Representation System / Christos Mavridis. -- The last shall be the first: failed accountability due to voters fatigue and ballot design / Christos Mavridis, Agustin Casas and Guillermo Diaz. -- Costly voting under complete information / Christos Mavridis, Marco SerenaPrograma Oficial de Doctorado en EconomíaPresidente: Pablo Amorós González; Secretario: Fracisco Marhuenda Hurtado; Vocal: Orestis Troumpouni

Social capital, communication channels and opinion formation

We study how different forms of social capital lead to different distributions of multidimensional opinions by affecting the channels through which individuals communicate. We develop a model to compare and contrast the evolution of opinions between societies whose members communicate through bonding associations (i.e., which bond similar people together) and societies where communication is through bridging associations (i.e., which bridge the gap among different people). Both processes converge towards opinion distributions where there are groups within which there is consensus in all issues. Bridging processes are more likely to lead to society-wide consensus and converge to distributions that have, on average, fewer opinion groups. The latter result holds even when the confidence bound that allows successful communication in the bridging process is much smaller than the respective bound in the bonding process