A survey of socially interactive robots

This paper reviews “socially interactive robots”: robots for which social human–robot interaction is important. We begin by discussing the context for socially interactive robots, emphasizing the relationship to other research fields and the different forms of “social robots”. We then present a taxonomy of design methods and system components used to build socially interactive robots. Finally, we describe the impact of these robots on humans and discuss open issues. An expanded version of this paper, which contains a survey and taxonomy of current applications, is available as a technical report [T. Fong, I

The Personal Exploration Rover and Museum Docents 1

Abstract. As an increasing number of robots have been designed to interact with people on a regular basis, research into human-robot interaction has become more widespread. At the same time, little work has been done on the problem of longterm human-robot interaction, in which a human uses a robot for a period of week

Empowering Local Communities using Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications can profoundly affect society. Recently, there has been extensive interest in studying how scientists design AI systems for general tasks. However, it remains an open question asto whether the AI systems developed in this way can work as expected in different regional contexts whilesimultaneously empowering local people. How can scientists co-create AI systems with local communitiesto address regional concerns? This article contributes new perspectives in this underexplored direction atthe intersection of data science, AI, citizen science, and human-computer interaction. Through case studies,we discuss challenges in co-designing AI systems with local people, collecting and explaining communitydata using AI, and adapting AI systems to long-term social change. We also consolidate insights into bridgingAI research and citizen needs, including evaluating the social impact of AI, curating community datasets forAI development, and building AI pipelines to explain data patterns to laypeople.Human-Centred Artificial IntelligenceSustainable Design Engineerin

The Personal Exploration Rover: The Ground-up Design, Deployment and Educational Evaluation of an Educational Robot for Unmediated Informal Learning Sites

Robotics brings together learning across mechanism, computation and interaction using the compelling model of real-time interaction with a physically instantiated intelligent device. The project described here is the third stage of the Personal Rover Project, which aims to produce technology, curriculum and evaluation techniques for use with after-school, out-of-school and informal learning environments mediated by robotics. Our most recent work has resulted in the Personal Exploration Rover (PER), whose goal is to create and evaluate a robot interaction that will educate members of the general public in an informal learning environment and capitalize on the current enthusiasm and excitement produced by NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs). We have two specific goals of teaching about the role of rovers as tools for scientific exploration and teaching about the importance of robot autonomy. To this effect we have designed an interactive, robotic museum exhibit which has been deployed at six locations across the United States. Here we describe the robot hardware and software designed for this task, the exhibits developed, and the results of formal evaluation of the exhibits ' educational impact on museum visitors

The Personal Exploration Rover: Educational

assessment of a robotic exhibit for informal learning venue