Elisa Foderaro, A. Cesta, A. Umbrico, Andrea Orlandini
{"title":"Simplifying the A.I. Planning modeling for Human-Robot Collaboration","authors":"Elisa Foderaro, A. Cesta, A. Umbrico, Andrea Orlandini","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515431","url":null,"abstract":"For an effective deployment in manufacturing, Collaborative Robots should be capable of adapting their behavior to the state of the environment and to keep the user safe and engaged during the interaction. Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables robots to autonomously operate understanding the environment, planning their tasks and acting to achieve some given goals. However, the effective deployment of AI technologies in real industrial environments is not straightforward. There is a need for engineering tools facilitating communication and interaction between AI engineers and Domain experts. This paper proposes a novel software tool, called TENANT (Tool fostEriNg Ai plaNning in roboTics) whose aim is to facilitate the use of AI planning technologies by providing domain experts like e.g., production engineers, with a graphical software framework to synthesize AI planning models abstracting from syntactic features of the underlying planning formalism.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"17 1","pages":"1011-1016"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78324323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Guillaume Sarthou, Amandine Mayima, Guilhem Buisan, Kathleen Belhassein, A. Clodic
{"title":"The Director Task: a Psychology-Inspired Task to Assess Cognitive and Interactive Robot Architectures","authors":"Guillaume Sarthou, Amandine Mayima, Guilhem Buisan, Kathleen Belhassein, A. Clodic","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515543","url":null,"abstract":"Assessing robotic architecture for Human-Robot Interaction can be challenging due to the number of features a robot has to endow to perform an acceptable interaction. While everyday-inspired tasks are interesting as reflecting a realistic use of such robots, they often contain a lot of unknown and uncontrolled conditions and specific robot behavior can be hard to test. In this paper, we propose a new psychology-inspired task, gathering perspective-taking, planning, knowledge representation with theory of mind, manipulation, and communication. Along with a precise description of the task allowing its replication, we present a cognitive robot architecture able to perform it in its nominal cases. We finally suggest some challenges and evaluations for the Human-Robot Interaction research community, all derived from this easy-to-replicate task.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"7 1","pages":"770-777"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74356249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Participatory Design of a Robotic Mental Well-being Coach","authors":"Minja Axelsson, I. Bodala, H. Gunes","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515356","url":null,"abstract":"Recent research is emerging in the field of Social Robotics where robots have the potential to serve as tools to improve human well-being. However, research exploring the expectations and perceptions of prospective users of such robots, and the professionals who currently deliver these interventions, is limited. In this paper, we present qualitative analysis of discussions with prospective users and experienced coaches regarding the design of robot well-being coaches. We invited participants interested in well-being practices to take-part in a Participatory Design (PD) study, consisting of individual interviews and a focus group discussion (NP = 8). Discussions focused on ideating how a robot could function as a mental well-being coach, based on their experiences with well-being practices. Data triangulation was employed by interviewing three professional coaches as additional sources of information. This resulted in a rich set of data, which we transcribed and analysed using Thematic Analysis (TA). The developed themes regarding robot features, form, behaviours, robot-led well-being practices, and the advantages and disadvantages these could provide, were compiled and are discussed in detail. We present this data together with tabulated quotes from the participants and coaches, to pave the way towards designing robot coaches that can provide supportive interventions to improve the mental health and well-being of their users.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"42 1","pages":"1081-1088"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80628322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Janani Swaminathan, Jane Akintoye, Marlena R. Fraune, H. Knight
{"title":"Robots That Run their Own Human Experiments: Exploring Relational Humor with Multi-Robot Comedy","authors":"Janani Swaminathan, Jane Akintoye, Marlena R. Fraune, H. Knight","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515324","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a street-style study method to conduct human-robot interaction studies in-the-wild where the robots conduct their own experiments by recruiting their audience, conducting the study and gathering data. This street-style study method was implemented using multi-robot comedy as the platform deployed at an arts and technology festival to validate the concept. Twelve robot comedy shows occurred over seven hours with two robots on stage, who queried the audience during and at the end of each show. The multi-robot aspect enabled the robots to act out interactions relative each other, oneself and the audience. The final street-style study method evolved from pilots at a local farmer’s market, with hardware designed for portability and easy replication. The robots conducted their own human experiments in that they queried the audience after displaying experimentally balanced episodes of relational humor, with permutations of who was the ‘butt of the joke.’ Our study results explore the relational humor of the two robots and the audience, asking the audience to agree or disagree with particular perspectives. Delivered as part of the show, the robots invite the audience to vote via a show of hands. ANOVA analyses of the percent-agreement results find that (1) audiences were generally positive about all aspects of the show unless both robots were being negative, and (2) audiences were more ready to protect the robot comedian’s ego than their own, strongly supporting the statement that the robot was doing a good job.New Abstract","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"17 1","pages":"1262-1268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75842331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Abubshait, J. Pérez-Osorio, D. D. Tommaso, A. Wykowska
{"title":"Collaboratively framed interactions increase the adoption of intentional stance towards robots","authors":"A. Abubshait, J. Pérez-Osorio, D. D. Tommaso, A. Wykowska","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515515","url":null,"abstract":"When humans interact with artificial agents, they adopt various stances towards them. On one side of the spectrum, people might adopt a mechanistic stance towards an agent and explain its behavior using its functional properties. On the other hand, people can adopt the intentional stance towards artificial agents and explain their behavior using mentalistic terms and explain the agents’ behavior using internal states (e.g., thoughts and feelings). While studies continue to investigate under which conditions people adopt the intentional stance towards artificial robots, here, we report a study in which we investigated the effect of social framing during a color-classification task with a humanoid robot, iCub. One group of participants were asked to complete the task with iCub, in collaboration, while the other group completed an identical task with iCub and were told that they were completing the task for themselves. Participants completed a task assessing their level of adoption of the Intentional Stance (the InStance test) prior to - and after completing the task. Results illustrate that participants who \"collaborated\" with iCub were more likely to adopt the intentional stance towards it after the interaction. These results suggest that social framing can be a powerful method to influence the stance that people adopt towards a robot.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"138 1","pages":"886-891"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74801196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social robots as leaders: leadership styles in human-robot teams*","authors":"Sara L. Lopes, J. Rocha, A. Ferreira, R. Prada","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515464","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores robotic leadership and the impact of different human-leadership styles in teams leaded by social robots. It is anticipated that social robots can have the capability to serve as leaders for human teams and to collaborate with humans in order to improve the organizational requirements of the workplace environment. We report an experiment conducted in order to determine which human-leadership styles would be associated with better results in organizational phenomena, such as, employee productivity, role ambiguity, engagement and employee satisfaction. The sample comprised 108 collaborators divided in 36 teams, who had to perform a collaborative task with a robotic leader acting according to two different leadership styles. The experiment results showed that both leadership styles can have positive impacts in organizational outcomes, although in different aspects. These findings yield important insights for the creation of robotic partners and for the successful introduction of robots as leaders of human teams.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"1 1","pages":"258-263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81707646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spatiotemporal 2D Skeleton-based Image for Dynamic Gesture Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks","authors":"J. Paulo, L. Garrote, P. Peixoto, U. Nunes","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515418","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a dynamic gesture recognition approach using a novel spatiotemporal 2D skeleton image representation that can be fed to computationally efficient deep convolutional neural networks, for applications on human-robot interaction. Gestures are a seamless modality of human interaction and represent a potentially natural way to interact with the smart devices around us, like robots. The contribution of this paper is the proposal of a visually interpretable representation of dynamic gestures, which has a two-fold advantage: (i) conveys both spatial and temporal characteristics relying on a technique inspired in computer graphics, (ii) and can be used with simple and efficient architectures of convolutional neural networks. In our representation, a 3D skeleton model is projected to a 2D camera’s point-of-view, preserving spatial relations, and through a sliding window the temporal domain is encoded in a fused image of consecutive frames, through a shading motion effect achieved by manipulating a transparency coefficient. The result is a 2D image that when fed to simple custom-designed convolutional neural networks, it is achieved accurate classification of dynamic gestures. Experimmental reuslts obtained with a purposely captured 6 gesture dataset of 11 subjects, and also 2 public datasets, give evidence of a strong performance of our approach, when compared to other methods.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"1 1","pages":"1138-1144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81942931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Taylor, A. Downing, G. A. Noury, G. Masala, Marco A Palomino, C. McGinn, Ray B. Jones
{"title":"Exploring the applicability of the socially assistive robot Stevie in a day center for people with dementia*","authors":"L. Taylor, A. Downing, G. A. Noury, G. Masala, Marco A Palomino, C. McGinn, Ray B. Jones","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515423","url":null,"abstract":"Socially assistive robots have the potential to help keep people with dementia cognitively active and entertained. This is important for their wellbeing. We explored staff perceptions of the acceptability of a new humanoid robot, Stevie, in an adult day care center for people with dementia. Stevie was deployed over 2 weeks in the day center to entertain 40 guests with dementia with three activities: (i) musical bingo, (ii) quizzes, and (iii) meet and greet. Nine staff members were asked what went well, whether the robot operated as expected, experiences of any technical issues, and the extent to which it hindered or aided their duties. Staff also rated guest engagement, guest enjoyment, and whether they were able to spend more time with guests. The sessions were successfully delivered. Staff reported that Stevie operated as expected, guest engagement with the robot was high, interactions with the robot were natural and the robot’s novelty helped engagement. Use of the robot gave staff more time to attend to guests’ needs. Suggested improvements included improvements to the robot’s voice and adding a pause function during activities. With greater autonomy and/or extended use of its telepresence functionality, use of Stevie could become cost effective in such settings.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"126 1","pages":"957-962"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77055171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pia S. C. Dautzenberg, G. Voß, Stefan Ladwig, Astrid M. Rosenthal-von der Pütten
{"title":"Investigation of different communication strategies for a delivery robot: the positive effects of humanlike communication styles *","authors":"Pia S. C. Dautzenberg, G. Voß, Stefan Ladwig, Astrid M. Rosenthal-von der Pütten","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515547","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses how robots should communicate with humans so that the interaction is successful and satisfying for the user. Specifically, within the present study, nine different communication strategies were examined for a service robot that provides transportation of goods by semi-automated following. The communication style (humanlike friendly, humanlike professional, machinelike) and modality (auditive male, auditive female, visual) of communication was varied and their influence on system evaluation regarding competence, warmth, discomfort, embodiment and preferences were investigated in an online study. The results of the study indicate that a humanlike communication is rated more competent, warmer, less discomforting, and is generally preferred. With regard to gender, no clear preferences or differences in evaluation were found. In terms of modality, a combination of auditive and visual interaction was favored. It should be noted that the data were collected online and verification of the results in situ is essential. Nevertheless, the results of this study provide intriguing implications on how to target HRI for the service robot examined.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"33 1","pages":"356-361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79746632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Merely a Conventional ‘Diffusion’ Problem? On the Adoption Process of Anki Vector","authors":"A. Weiss, A. Pillinger, Christiana Tsiourti","doi":"10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515369","url":null,"abstract":"Empirical evidence suggests that the first wave of commercially available social robots for private homes was doomed to fail. Robot start-ups shut down and participants in long-term field trials refused to use these robots after only weeks. We conducted a household study over the course of seven months, during which the commercially available Anki Vector robot was introduced to eight demographically diverse private homes for participants’ free use. The study aimed to understand which factors of owning Vector were relevant in the long-term, even if the participants did not sustainably integrate the robot into their daily lives. We used Domestic Robot Ecology (developed through studies on vacuum cleaning robots) to qualitatively analyse data collected through six household visits and compare the results with previous research on vacuum cleaning robots. Our results show the significance of subjective perceptions and expectations for what social companion robots are, how they work, and what they are or are not capable of doing. Due to a lack of perceived practical benefits and the decline of hedonic and social gain, the participating households did not sustainably integrate Vector into their daily lives. Based on our findings, we conclude that the adoption process of personal companion robots slightly differs from that of functional vacuum cleaning robots but may not differ substantially from technology adoption processes in general.","PeriodicalId":6854,"journal":{"name":"2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)","volume":"147 1","pages":"712-719"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79832701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}