scholarly journals Anthropomorphizing Robots: The Effect of Framing in Human-Robot Collaboration

Author(s):  
Linda Onnasch ◽  
Eileen Roesler

Anthropomorphic framing of social robots is widely believed to facilitate human-robot interaction. In two subsequent studies, the impact of anthropomorphic framing was examined regarding the subjective perception of a robot and the willingness to donate money for this robot. In both experiments, participants received either an anthropomorphic or a functional description of a humanoid NAO robot prior to a cooperative task. Afterwards the perceived robot’s humanlike perception and the willingness to “save” the robot from malfunctioning were assessed (donation behavior). Surprisingly, the first study revealed a negative effect of anthropomorphic framing on the willingness to donate. This negative effect disappeared if the robot’s functional value for the task fulfillment was additionally made explicit (Study 2). In both studies, no effect of anthropomorphic framing on the humanlike perception of the robot was found. However, the behavioral results support the relevance of a functional awareness in social human-robot interaction.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aida Amirova ◽  
Nazerke Rakhymbayeva ◽  
Elmira Yadollahi ◽  
Anara Sandygulova ◽  
Wafa Johal

The evolving field of human-robot interaction (HRI) necessitates that we better understand how social robots operate and interact with humans. This scoping review provides an overview of about 300 research works focusing on the use of the NAO robot from 2010 to 2020. This study presents one of the most extensive and inclusive pieces of evidence on the deployment of the humanoid NAO robot and its global reach. Unlike most reviews, we provide both qualitative and quantitative results regarding how NAO is being used and what has been achieved so far. We analyzed a wide range of theoretical, empirical, and technical contributions that provide multidimensional insights, such as general trends in terms of application, the robot capabilities, its input and output modalities of communication, and the human-robot interaction experiments that featured NAO (e.g. number and roles of participants, design, and the length of interaction). Lastly, we derive from the review some research gaps in current state-of-the-art and provide suggestions for the design of the next generation of social robots.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 1950003
Author(s):  
Mısra Turp ◽  
José Carlos González ◽  
José Carlos Pulido ◽  
Fernando Fernández

Enveloping cognitive or physical rehabilitation into a game highly increases the patients’ commitment with their treatment. Specially with children, keeping them motivated is a very time-consuming work, so therapists are demanding tools to help them with this task. NAOTherapist is a generic robotic architecture that uses Automated Planning techniques to autonomously drive noncontact upper-limb rehabilitation sessions for children with a humanoid NAO robot. Our aim is to develop more robotic games for this platform to enrich its variability and possibilities of interaction. The goal of this work is to present our first attempt to develop a different, more complex game that reuses the previous architecture. We contribute with the design description of a novel robotic Simon game that employs upper-limb poses instead of colors and could qualify as a cognitive and physical training. Statistics of evaluation tests with 14 adults and 56 children are displayed and the outcomes are analyzed in terms of human–robot interaction (HRI) quality. The results demonstrate the application-domain generalization capabilities of the NAOTherapist architecture and give an insight to further analyze the therapeutic benefits of the new developed Simon game.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (19) ◽  
pp. 6438
Author(s):  
Chiara Filippini ◽  
David Perpetuini ◽  
Daniela Cardone ◽  
Arcangelo Merla

An intriguing challenge in the human–robot interaction field is the prospect of endowing robots with emotional intelligence to make the interaction more genuine, intuitive, and natural. A crucial aspect in achieving this goal is the robot’s capability to infer and interpret human emotions. Thanks to its design and open programming platform, the NAO humanoid robot is one of the most widely used agents for human interaction. As with person-to-person communication, facial expressions are the privileged channel for recognizing the interlocutor’s emotional expressions. Although NAO is equipped with a facial expression recognition module, specific use cases may require additional features and affective computing capabilities that are not currently available. This study proposes a highly accurate convolutional-neural-network-based facial expression recognition model that is able to further enhance the NAO robot’ awareness of human facial expressions and provide the robot with an interlocutor’s arousal level detection capability. Indeed, the model tested during human–robot interactions was 91% and 90% accurate in recognizing happy and sad facial expressions, respectively; 75% accurate in recognizing surprised and scared expressions; and less accurate in recognizing neutral and angry expressions. Finally, the model was successfully integrated into the NAO SDK, thus allowing for high-performing facial expression classification with an inference time of 0.34 ± 0.04 s.


Robotica ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Mohan ◽  
W. S. Wijesoma ◽  
C. A. A. Calderon ◽  
C. J. Zhou

SUMMARYEstimating robot performance in human robot teams is a vital problem in human robot interaction community. In a previous work, we presented extended neglect tolerance model for estimation of robot performance, where the human operator switches control between robots sequentially based on acceptable performance levels, taking into account any false alarms in human robot interactions. Task complexity is a key parameter that directly impacts the robot performance as well as the false alarms occurrences. In this paper, we validate the extended neglect tolerance model for two robot tasks of varying complexity levels. We also present the impact of task complexity on robot performance estimations and false alarms demands. Experiments were performed with real and virtual humanoid soccer robots across tele-operated and semi-autonomous modes of autonomy. Measured false alarm demand and robot performances were largely consistent with the extended neglect tolerance model predictions for both real and virtual robot experiments. Experiments also showed that the task complexity is directly proportional to false alarm demands and inversely proportional to robot performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Zörner ◽  
Emy Arts ◽  
Brenda Vasiljevic ◽  
Ankit Srivastava ◽  
Florian Schmalzl ◽  
...  

As robots become more advanced and capable, developing trust is an important factor of human-robot interaction and cooperation. However, as multiple environmental and social factors can influence trust, it is important to develop more elaborate scenarios and methods to measure human-robot trust. A widely used measurement of trust in social science is the investment game. In this study, we propose a scaled-up, immersive, science fiction Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) scenario for intrinsic motivation on human-robot collaboration, built upon the investment game and aimed at adapting the investment game for human-robot trust. For this purpose, we utilize two Neuro-Inspired COmpanion (NICO) - robots and a projected scenery. We investigate the applicability of our space mission experiment design to measure trust and the impact of non-verbal communication. We observe a correlation of 0.43 (p=0.02) between self-assessed trust and trust measured from the game, and a positive impact of non-verbal communication on trust (p=0.0008) and robot perception for anthropomorphism (p=0.007) and animacy (p=0.00002). We conclude that our scenario is an appropriate method to measure trust in human-robot interaction and also to study how non-verbal communication influences a human’s trust in robots.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Ebru Baykara ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska

Robots will soon enter social environments shared with humans. We need robots that are able to efficiently convey social signals during interactions. At the same time, we need to understand the impact of robots’ behavior on the human brain. For this purpose, human behavioral and neural responses to the robot behavior should be quantified offering feedback on how to improve and adjust robot behavior. Under this premise, our approach is to use methods of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience to assess the human’s reception of a robot in human-robot interaction protocols. As an example of this approach, we report an adaptation of a classical paradigm of experimental cognitive psychology to a naturalistic human- robot interaction scenario. We show the feasibility of such an approach with a validation pilot study, which demonstrated that our design yielded a similar pattern of data to what has been previously observed in experiments within the area of cognitive psychology. Our approach allows for addressing specific mechanisms of human cognition that are elicited during human-robot interaction, and thereby, in a longer-term perspective, it will allow for designing robots that are well- attuned to the workings of the human brain.


2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu She ◽  
Siyang Song ◽  
Hai-Jun Su ◽  
Junmin Wang

Abstract In this paper, we study the effects of mechanical compliance on safety in physical human–robot interaction (pHRI). More specifically, we compare the effect of joint compliance and link compliance on the impact force assuming a contact occurred between a robot and a human head. We first establish pHRI system models that are composed of robot dynamics, an impact contact model, and head dynamics. These models are validated by Simscape simulation. By comparing impact results with a robotic arm made of a compliant link (CL) and compliant joint (CJ), we conclude that the CL design produces a smaller maximum impact force given the same lateral stiffness as well as other physical and geometric parameters. Furthermore, we compare the variable stiffness joint (VSJ) with the variable stiffness link (VSL) for various actuation parameters and design parameters. While decreasing stiffness of CJs cannot effectively reduce the maximum impact force, CL design is more effective in reducing impact force by varying the link stiffness. We conclude that the CL design potentially outperforms the CJ design in addressing safety in pHRI and can be used as a promising alternative solution to address the safety constraints in pHRI.


Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 971
Author(s):  
Selene Goenaga ◽  
Loraine Navarro ◽  
Christian G. Quintero M. ◽  
Mauricio Pardo

This paper proposes an intelligent system that can hold an interview, using a NAO robot as interviewer playing the role of vocational tutor. For that, twenty behaviors within five personality profiles are classified and categorized into NAO. Five basic emotions are considered: anger, boredom, interest, surprise, and joy. Selected behaviors are grouped according to these five different emotions. Common behaviors (e.g., movements or body postures) used by the robot during vocational guidance sessions are based on a theory of personality traits called the “Five-Factor Model”. In this context, a predefined set of questions is asked by the robot—according to a theoretical model called the “Orientation Model”—about the person’s vocational preferences. Therefore, NAO could react as conveniently as possible during the interview, according to the score of the answer given by the person to the question posed and its personality type. Additionally, based on the answers to these questions, a vocational profile is established, and the robot could provide a recommendation about the person’s vocation. The results show how the intelligent selection of behaviors can be successfully achieved through the proposed approach, making the Human–Robot Interaction friendlier.


Robotics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Younsse Ayoubi ◽  
Med Laribi ◽  
Said Zeghloul ◽  
Marc Arsicault

Unlike “classical” industrial robots, collaborative robots, known as cobots, implement a compliant behavior. Cobots ensure a safe force control in a physical interaction scenario within unknown environments. In this paper, we propose to make serial robots intrinsically compliant to guarantee safe physical human–robot interaction (pHRI), via our novel designed device called V2SOM, which stands for Variable Stiffness Safety-Oriented Mechanism. As its name indicates, V2SOM aims at making physical human–robot interaction safe, thanks to its two basic functioning modes—high stiffness mode and low stiffness mode. The first mode is employed for normal operational routines. In contrast, the low stiffness mode is suitable for the safe absorption of any potential blunt shock with a human. The transition between the two modes is continuous to maintain a good control of the V2SOM-based cobot in the case of a fast collision. V2SOM presents a high inertia decoupling capacity which is a necessary condition for safe pHRI without compromising the robot’s dynamic performances. Two safety criteria of pHRI were considered for performance evaluations, namely, the impact force (ImpF) criterion and the head injury criterion (HIC) for, respectively, the external and internal damage evaluation during blunt shocks.


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