Alle Publikationen
2020
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(2020): Human-robot interaction. An introduction. Cambridge; New York, NY; Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press
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(2020): The Secret Life of Robots: Perspectives and Challenges for Robot’s Behaviours During Non-interactive Tasks. In: International Journal of Social Robotics, S. 1265-1278. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-020-00650-z
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00650-z Abstract: Some applications of service robots within domestic and working environments are envisaged to be a significant part of our lives in the not too distant future. They are developed to autonomously accomplish different tasks either on behalf of or in collaboration with a human being. Robots can perceive and interpret data from the external environment, so they also collect personal information and habits; they can plan, navigate, and manipulate objects, eventually intruding in our personal space and disturbing us in the current activities. Indeed, such capabilities need to be socially enhanced to ensure their effective deployment and to favour a significant social impact. The modelling and evaluation of a service robot’s behaviour, while not interacting with a human, have only been marginally considered in the last few years. But these can be expected to play a key role in developing socially acceptable robotic applications that can be used widely. To explore this research direction, we present research objectives related to the effective development of socially-aware service robots that are not involved in tasks that require explicit interaction with a person. Such discussion aims at highlighting some of the future challenges that will be posed for the social robotics community in the next years.
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(2020): A Holistic Approach to Behavior Adaptation for Socially Assistive Robots. In: International Journal of Social Robotics, S. 617-637. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-019-00617-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00617-9 Abstract: Socially assistive robotics aims at providing users with continuous support and personalized assistance, through appropriate social interactions. The design of robots capable of supporting people in heterogeneous tasks, raises several challenges among which the most relevant are the need to realise intelligent and continuous behaviours, robustness and flexibility of services and, furthermore, the ability to adapt to different contexts and needs. Artificial intelligence plays a key role in realizing cognitive capabilities like e.g., learning, context reasoning or planning that are highly needed in socially assistive robots. The integration of several of such capabilities is an open problem. This paper proposes a novel “cognitive approach” integrating ontology-based knowledge reasoning, automated planning and execution technologies. The core idea is to endow assistive robots with intelligent features in order to reason at different levels of abstraction, understand specific health-related needs and decide how to act in order to perform personalized assistive tasks. The paper presents such a cognitive approach pointing out the contribution of different knowledge contexts and perspectives, presents detailed functioning traces to show adaptation and personalization features, and finally discusses an experimental assessment proving the feasibility of the approach.
2019
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(2019) : A Layered Architecture for Socially Assistive Robotics as a Service: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC): 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC): Bari, Italy: 10/6/2019 - 10/9/2019: [Piscataway, NJ]: IEEE, S. 352-357
Abstract: Socially assistive robotics technology is expected to play a crucial role in supporting home patients with neurological disorders. Nevertheless, the adoption of such technology in real home environments is still far to be reached since it presents several challenges mainly related to its acceptance in the everyday life. In this domain, a high degree of personalization is required usually obtained by a customization of a robotic system with respect to specific assistive tasks. On the contrary, socially assistive robots are usually general-purpose platforms requiring a considerable effort for customization. In this work, to limit static and costly customization of robotic systems, a service-oriented approach is adopted to represent and manage assistive tasks to be performed by a social robotic system, allowing to decouple a given functionality from its concrete implementation that can be provided by different devices and with different execution modalities. The service-oriented approach for robotics applications, known as Robot-as-a-Service, is becoming attractive for decoupling the robot hardware from the functionalities it provides.
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(2019): The benefits of and barriers to using a social robot PARO in care settings: a scoping review. In: BMC geriatrics 19 (1). DOI: 10.1186/s12877-019-1244-6
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31443636 Abstract: BACKGROUND Given the complexity of providing dementia care in hospitals, integrating technology into practice is a high challenge and an important opportunity. Although there are a growing demand and interest in using social robots in a variety of care settings to support dementia care, little is known about the impacts of the robotics and their application in care settings, i.e., what worked, in which situations, and how. METHODS Scientific databases and Google Scholar were searched to identify publications published since 2000. The inclusion criteria consisted of older people with dementia, care setting, and social robot PARO. RESULTS A total of 29 papers were included in the review. Content analysis identified 3 key benefits of and 3 barriers to the use of PARO. Main benefits include: reducing negative emotion and behavioral symptoms, improving social engagement, and promoting positive mood and quality of care experience. Key barriers are: cost and workload, infection concerns, and stigma and ethical issues. This review reveals 3 research gaps: (a) the users' needs and experiences remain unexplored, (b) few studies investigate the process of how to use the robot effectively to meet clinical needs, and (c) theory should be used to guide implementation. CONCLUSIONS Most interventions conducted have been primarily researcher-focused. Future research should pay more attention to the clinical needs of the patient population and develop strategies to overcome barriers to the adoption of PARO in order to maximize patient benefits.
Keywords: 80 and over, Affect, Aged, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Delivery of Health Care, Dementia, economics, Humans, Methods, physiology, PSYCHOLOGY, Robotics, Therapy, Trends -
(2019): Anthropomorphization of artificial agents leads to fair and strategic, but not altruistic behavior. In: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 122, S. 168-173. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.09.008
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.09.008 Abstract: With robots playing an increasing role in our daily lives, our emotional responses to them have become an active subject of study. The process of anthropomorphization, ascribing human affordances to non-human objects, is thought to play a large role in human-robot interaction. However, earlier studies have relied largely on experimenter’s manipulation of anthropomorphism, and the use of virtual robots. The aim of this study was to investigate peopleâs fairness preference and strategic and altruistic behavior toward different opponents (a human, a semi-humanoid and a spider-like robot, and a laptop) in two economic games. Anthropomorphization questionnaires and mood measures were also administered. Our findings suggest that fairness preference and strategic behavior are not predicted by the opponent’s physical appearance, but instead predicted by individual differences in the tendency to anthropomorphize others. Altruistic behavior, on the other hand, is affected by the opponent’s physical appearance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2019): Human Understanding of Robot Motion: The Role of Velocity and Orientation. In: International Journal of Social Robotics 11 (1), S. 75-88. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-018-0493-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-018-0493-4 Abstract: A general problem in human–robot interaction is how to test the quality of single robot behavior, in order to develop robust and human-acceptable skills. The most typical approach are user tests with subjective measures (questionnaires). We propose a new experimental paradigm that combines subjective measures with an objective behavioral measure, namely viewing times of images viewed as self-paced slide show. We applied this paradigm to human-aware robot navigation. With three experiments, we studied the influence of two aspects of robot motion: velocity profiles and the robot’s orientation. A decreasing velocity profile influenced the predictability of the observed motion, and robot orientations diverting from the robot’s motion vector caused reduced perceived autonomy ratings. We conclude that the viewing time paradigm is a promising tool for studying human-aware robot behavior and that the design of human-aware robot navigation needs to consider both the velocity and the orientation of robots.
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(2019): Machine behaviour. In: Nature 568 (7753), S. 477-486. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1138-y
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31019318 Abstract: Machines powered by artificial intelligence increasingly mediate our social, cultural, economic and political interactions. Understanding the behaviour of artificial intelligence systems is essential to our ability to control their actions, reap their benefits and minimize their harms. Here we argue that this necessitates a broad scientific research agenda to study machine behaviour that incorporates and expands upon the discipline of computer science and includes insights from across the sciences. We first outline a set of questions that are fundamental to this emerging field and then explore the technical, legal and institutional constraints on the study of machine behaviour.
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(2019): Sharing the workplace with robots? New tool helps designers create safer socially oriented machines. In: Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 22 (5), S. 360-361. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2019.29151.ceu
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.29151.ceu Abstract: This article aims to to describe the characteristics of current cyberpsychology research in Europe. In particular, CyberEurope aims at describing the leading research groups and projects running on the other side of the Ocean. Human safety is a primary concern in human–robot interaction (HRI). When there is physical contact between humans and robots, dangerous collisions are likely. The safety map helps users to determine if the robot they are designing is capable of inflicting specific injuries during unexpected collisions. They can also pinpoint the most dangerous areas in the robot’s workspace and compare their robot with others in terms of safety characteristics. As a result, designers have clear information at their fingertips about the injuries most likely to occur during operation. This helps to guide the hardware design process, and also contributes to safe control and motion planning for the robot being designed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2019): Privacy with Surgical Robotics: Challenges in Applying Contextual Privacy Theory. Online verfügbar unter http://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.01862v1
Abstract: The use of connected surgical robotics to automate medical procedures presents new privacy challenges. We argue that conventional patient consent protocols no longer work. Indeed robots that replace human surgeons take on an extraordinary level of responsibility. Surgeons undergo years of training and peer review in a strongly regulated environment, and derive trust via a patient's faith in the hospital system. Robots on the other hand derive trust differently, via the integrity of the software that governs their operation. From a privacy perspective, there are two fundamental shifts. First, the threat model has shifted from one where the humans involved were untrusted to one where the robotic software is untrusted. Second, the basic unit of privacy control is no longer a medical record, but is replaced by four new basic units: the subject on which the robot is taking action; the tools used by the robot; the sensors (i.e data) the robot can access; and, finally access to monitoring and calibration services which afford correct operation of the robot. We suggest that contextual privacy provides useful theoretical tools to solve the privacy problems posed by surgical robots. However, it also poses some challenges: not least that the complexity of the contextual-privacy policies, if rigorously specified to achieve verification and enforceability, will be exceedingly high to directly expose to humans that review contextual privacy policies. A medical robot works with both information and physical material. While informational norms allow for judgements about contextual integrity and the transmission principle governs the constraints applied on information transfer, nothing is said about material property. Certainly, contextual privacy provides an anchor for useful notions of privacy in this scenario and thus should be considered to be extended to cover both information and material flows.
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(2019): Media are social actors: Individuals’ social responses to social robots and mobile phones. ProQuest Information & Learning.
Abstract: The Computers are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm was proposed more than two decades ago to understand humans’ interaction with computer technologies. Today, as emerging media technologies including social robots and smartphones become more personal and persuasive, questions of how users respond to them socially, what individual factors leverage the relationship, and what constitutes the social influence of these technologies need to be addressed. As an expansion of the CASA paradigm, the Media are Social Actors (MASA) paradigm was applied in the current dissertation to understand users’ social perception, social attitudes, and social behavior in their interactions with humanoid social robots and smartphones. Two lab experiments with between-subjects factorial design were conducted. A total of 110 participants were asked to interact with a humanoid social robot and a smartphone respectively in a socio-emotional context and a task-oriented context. Four pairs of social cues were compared to understand their influence on users’ anthropomorphism of the technologies. Multivariate analyses and textual analyses were conducted. Results suggested that users developed more trust in the social robot with a human voice than with a synthetic voice. Users also developed more intimacy and more interest in the social robot when the robot was paired with humanlike gestures. However, individual differences such as users’ attitudes toward robots, robot use experiences, and suspension of disbelief affected users’ psychological responses to the social robot. Although users’ responses to the smartphone did not vary based on the language styles and the modalities, factors such as individuals’ intensive smartphone use, mobile use habits, and their source orientation and re-orientation moderated the social influence of the smartphone. The dissertation has theoretical value in expanding the CASA paradigm to social robots and smartphones. It also tests the validity of the propositions of the MASA paradigm. The results can lead to more comprehensive, nuanced, and exciting discoveries of the social implications, ethical implications, and practical guides of using these emerging media technologies in the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
Keywords: Language, Media, mobile phones, Moral & Ethik, Robotics, social actors, social media, social responses, social robots 2018
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(2018): Ethics for Robots as Experimental Technologies: Pairing Anticipation with Exploration to Evaluate the Social Impact of Robotics. In: IEEE Robotics Automation Magazine 25 (1), S. 30-36. DOI: 10.1109/MRA.2017.2781543
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2017.2781543 Abstract: The evaluation of the societal impact of autonomous technologies, particularly robotics, has grown in technological contexts (e.g., see [14] and the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems [20]), as well as broader political contexts (e.g., see the 2017 European Parliament report regarding civil law rules on robotics [21]). In this article, we adopt the perspective that conceptualizes new technologies as social experiments, stressing their experimental character to deal with the inherent uncertainty that affects their behavior. We suggest that the kind of experiments performed when evaluating robots in specific contexts of use are explorative experiments, i.e., investigations carried out in the absence of a proper theory or theoretical background that diverge from the traditional notion of controlled experiments. Considering this epistemological shift, we apply the ethical framework proposed by van de Poel for experimental technologies to the case of robotics, and we discuss its implications on the design of robots. To make our discussion more concrete, we reference the field of robots for search and rescue, which offers a challenging opportunity to test socioethical approaches to the development of robots and their interactions with environments and humans.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, autonomous technologies, ethical aspects, Ethics, experimental technologies, ieee xplore, Künstliche Intelligenz, Law, Monitoring, Politics, Robotics, Robots, service robot, social aspects of automation, Social implications of technology, technological contexts -
(2018): Emotionale Roboter im Pflegekontext : Empirische Analyse des bisherigen Einsatzes und der Wirkungen von Paro und Pleo. In: Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie 51 (1), S. 16-24. DOI: 10.1007/s00391-017-1346-8
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29218400 Abstract: BACKGROUND It has been questioned by researchers in robotics as well in the general public to what extent companion-type robots can support the elderly with the fulfillment of their psychological and social needs. Although these robots have already been used in care settings in Germany, research has referred little to this practical experience in order to analyze their impact and benefit. To start to close this gap, the current article reports on the current use of companion-type robots in care settings, on the effects reported by professional caregivers as well as on the role of psychosocial needs in the acceptance and use of companion-type robots by the elderly. MATERIAL AND METHODS In the first study, 30 professional caregivers with experience in the use of the robot seal Paro in care settings were interviewed regarding Paro's application and the observed effects on their clients. In the second study, three case examples are presented from an interaction study in which vulnerable elderly persons had the robot dinosaur Pleo at their disposal for a maximum period of 15 days. RESULTS Paro is used very flexibly in a variety of settings and with a broad range of user groups (study 1). The reported psychosocial effects were mainly positive but short term. The case examples (study 2) show that psychosocial needs can both foster or hinder robot acceptance and use. They also emphasize the important role of caregivers in the interaction between the elderly and emotional robots in the context of eldercare. CONCLUSION The beneficial and ethical use of companion-type robots in care settings demands a high commitment on the part of the caregivers. Given this prerequisite, emotional robots can be a valuable therapeutic tool.
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(2018): ROBIN, a Telepresence Robot to Support Older Users Monitoring and Social Inclusion: Development and Evaluation. In: Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association 24 (2), S. 145-154. DOI: 10.1089/tmj.2016.0258
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2016.0258 Abstract: INTRODUCTION This article describes an enhanced telepresence robot named ROBIN, part of a telecare system derived from the GIRAFFPLUS project for supporting and monitoring older adults at home. ROBIN is integrated in a sensor-rich environment that aims to continuously monitor physical and psychological wellbeing of older persons living alone. The caregivers (formal/informal) can communicate through it with their assisted persons. Long-term trials in real houses highlighted several user requirements that inspired improvements on the robotic platform. The enhanced telepresence robot was assessed by users to test its suitability to support social interaction and provide motivational feedback on health-related aspects. METHODS Twenty-five users (n = 25) assessed the new multimodal interaction capabilities and new communication services. A psychophysiological approach was adopted to investigate aspects like engagement, usability, and affective impact, as well as the possible role of individual differences on the quality of human-robot interaction. RESULTS ROBIN was overall judged usable, the interaction with/through it resulted pleasant and the required workload was limited, thus supporting the idea of using it as a central component for remote assistance and social participation. Open-minded users tended to have a more positive interaction with it. CONCLUSIONS This work describes an enabling technology for remote assistance and social communication. It highlights the importance of being compliant with users' needs to develop solutions easy to use and able to foster their social connections. The role of personality appeared to be relevant for the interaction, underscoring a clear role of the service personalization.
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(2018): Anthropomorphism in human–robot co-evolution. In: Frontiers in psychology 9, S. 1-9. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00468
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00468 Abstract: Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents – social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic projections in users. The objective is to give robots ’social presence’ and ’social behaviors’ that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of ‘applied anthropomorphism’ as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a ’cheating’ technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns ’anthropomorphism-based’ social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, ’synthetic ethics,’ which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): Long-term cohabitation with a social robot: A case study of the influence of human attachment patterns. In: International Journal of Social Robotics 10 (1), S. 163-176. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-017-0439-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0439-2 Abstract: This paper presents the methodology, setup and results of a study involving long-term cohabitation with a fully autonomous social robot. During the experiment, three people with different attachment styles (as defined by John Bowlby) spent ten days each with an EMYS type robot, which was installed in their own apartments. It was hypothesized that the attachment patterns represented by the test subjects influence the interaction. In order to provide engaging and non-schematic actions suitable for the experiment requirements, the existing robot control system was modified, which allowed EMYS to become an effective home assistant. Experiment data was gathered using the robot’s state logging utility (during the cohabitation period) and in-depth interviews (after the study). Based on the analyzed data, it was concluded that the satisfaction stemming from prolonged cohabitation and the assessment of robot’s operation depend on the user’s attachment style. Results lead to first robot’s behavior personalization guidelines for different user’s attachment patterns. The study confirmed readiness of a EMYS robot for satisfying, autonomous, and long-term cohabitation with users. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): Anticipation enhanced behavior-based robotics using integrated system dynamics. ProQuest Information & Learning.
Abstract: Behavior-based robotics specifies behavior as the interaction between the task, environment, and agent with specific capabilities that creates a successful behavior to attain task achievement. Observed task achieving behavior is confirmed and validated by a prespecified performance criteria. For behavior-based robotics, conditions in the niche environment are directly matched to and cue behavior choice that yields task achievement by the robot agent. A minimalist approach attains this behavior choice from only a few possible scenarios for the niche environment and a simple associated response. Previous work in behavior-based robotics has been generally limited to a reactive response to environmental conditions, with little or no notion of looking ahead to potential successful future outcomes. Focus on the notion of anticipation provides a novel addition to the task achieving behavior-based robotics approach. Anticipation is the formulation of suitable processes to manifest behavior from a small set of feasible scenarios in the near future before the outcome is certain. Anticipation results in successful behavior beyond mere reactions to niche conditions that leads to desired task achievement with expected perceived immediate or later reward based on suitable fitness matched to the niche. The approach to add anticipation developed a formal system dynamics model to represent previously known behavior archetypes, extended them with the notion of anticipation, and enhanced the system dynamics operation. Simulation of a robot instance using anticipation for wall following, called the TOURIST, was conducted to gain insight into behaviors that would be observable in a real world natural system. Simulation of the TOURIST robot with anticipation built into the archetype programming illustrated the advantages of including the notion of anticipation. Anticipation allows a TOURIST robot agent to travel a smoother path and make choice of small increments in behavior change that produce more desired longer term responses. With anticipation, numerous small adjustments are made that require less energy than large spins of the SEEK behavior, so only one third of the SEEK behaviors occur, and thus wastes less energy and time. Also with anticipation, the TOURIST makes twice as many cycles of the area at the same speed and in the same time, so a broader range of area is covered and can more readily perceive any dynamic changes in the overall arena. The methods and insights were added to a real world robot instance, and the benefits of anticipation were observed to occur. A specific metric, ANNum, was developed for describing operation of the TOURIST robot. Greater metric values were found with anticipation on, reflecting more behavior responsiveness to the niche per unit time when anticipation was used. In conclusion, anticipation enhances robotic performance by manifesting task achieving behavior that is properly matched to a specific niche condition. Anticipation extends beyond the merely reactive behavior previously used in behavior-based robotics by acting like a funnel or channel to guide the behavior choice to match a specific niche. The observed behavior choice is manifest before the outcome is realized and certain to occur. As a practical result, the robot agent is able to make many smaller adjustments earlier and faster with better chance for desired outcome than would be observed without anticipation. It circumvents repeated larger adjustments that waste more resources and take more time for task achievement. Such enhanced anticipation behavior avoids obstructions and potential destructive paths or motion, and is more able to achieve tasks such as to find objects and move along walls with minimal effort. Thus, anticipation that is added to robot architecture improves behavior choices to realize desired task achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): Ms An (meeting students’ academic needs): A socially adaptive robot tutor for student engagement in math education. ProQuest Information & Learning.
Abstract: This research presents a new, socially adaptive robot tutor, Ms. An ( Meeting Students’ Academic N eeds). The goal of this research was to use a decision tree model to develop a socially adaptive robot tutor that predicted and responded to student emotion and performance to actively engage students in mathematics education. The novelty of this multi-disciplinary project is the combination of the fields of HRI, AI, and education. In this study we 1) implemented a decision tree model to classify student emotion and performance for use in adaptive robot tutoring-an approach not applied to educational robotics; 2) presented an intuitive interface for seamless robot operation by novice users; and 3) applied direct human teaching methods (guided practice and progress monitoring) for a robot tutor to engage students in mathematics education. Twenty 4th and 5th grade students in rural South Carolina participated in a between subjects study with two conditions: A) with a non-adaptive robot (control group); and B) with a socially adaptive robot (adaptive group). Students engaged in two one-on-one tutoring sessions to practice multiplication per the South Carolina 4th and 5 th grade mathematics state standards. Although our decision tree models were not very predictive, the results gave answers to our current questions and clarity for future directions. Our adaptive strategies to engage students academically were effective. Further, all students enjoyed working with the robot and we did not see a difference in emotional engagement across the two groups. This study offered insight for developing a socially adaptive robot tutor to engage students academically and emotionally while practicing multiplication. Results from this study will inform the human-robot interaction (HRI) and artificial intelligence (AI) communities on best practices and techniques within the scope of this work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): Intuitive control of mobile robots: An architecture for autonomous adaptive dynamic behaviour integration. In: Cognitive Processing 19 (2), S. 245-264. DOI: 10.1007/s10339-017-0818-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-017-0818-5 Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel approach to human–robot control. Taking inspiration from behaviour-based robotics and self-organisation principles, we present an interfacing mechanism, with the ability to adapt both towards the user and the robotic morphology. The aim is for a transparent mechanism connecting user and robot, allowing for a seamless integration of control signals and robot behaviours. Instead of the user adapting to the interface and control paradigm, the proposed architecture allows the user to shape the control motifs in their way of preference, moving away from the case where the user has to read and understand an operation manual, or it has to learn to operate a specific device. Starting from a tabula rasa basis, the architecture is able to identify control patterns (behaviours) for the given robotic morphology and successfully merge them with control signals from the user, regardless of the input device used. The structural components of the interface are presented and assessed both individually and as a whole. Inherent properties of the architecture are presented and explained. At the same time, emergent properties are presented and investigated. As a whole, this paradigm of control is found to highlight the potential for a change in the paradigm of robotic control, and a new level in the taxonomy of human in the loop systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): The essence of ethical reasoning in robot-emotion processing. In: International Journal of Social Robotics 10 (2), S. 211-223. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-017-0459-y
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0459-y Abstract: As social robots become more and more intelligent and autonomous in operation, it is extremely important to ensure that such robots act in socially acceptable manner. More specifically, if such an autonomous robot is capable of generating and expressing emotions of its own, it should also have an ability to reason if it is ethical to exhibit a particular emotional state in response to a surrounding event. Most existing computational models of emotion for social robots have focused on achieving a certain level of believability of the emotions expressed. We argue that believability of a robot’s emotions, although crucially necessary, is not a sufficient quality to elicit socially acceptable emotions. Thus, we stress on the need of higher level of cognition in emotion processing mechanism which empowers social robots with an ability to decide if it is socially appropriate to express a particular emotion in a given context or it is better to inhibit such an experience. In this paper, we present the detailed mathematical explanation of the ethical reasoning mechanism in our computational model, EEGS, that helps a social robot to reach to the most socially acceptable emotional state when more than one emotions are elicited by an event. Experimental results show that ethical reasoning in EEGS helps in the generation of believable as well as socially acceptable emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): Views of nurses and other health and social care workers on the use of assistive humanoid and animal-like robots in health and social care: a scoping review. In: Contemporary nurse 54 (4-5), S. 425-442. DOI: 10.1080/10376178.2018.1519374
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10376178.2018.1519374 Abstract: BACKGROUND Robots are introduced in many health and social care settings. OBJECTIVES To provide an overview of the existing evidence related to the views of nurses and other health and social care workers about the use of assistive humanoid and animal-like robots. METHODS Using the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines we searched MEDLINE, PUBMED, CINHAL, EMBASE, PsycInfo, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore digital library. Nineteen (19) articles met the criteria for inclusion. RESULTS Health care workers reported mixed views regarding the use of robots. They considered an array of tasks that robots could perform; they addressed the issue of patient safety and raised concerns about privacy. CONCLUSIONS A limited number of studies have explored the views of health care workers about the use of robots. Considering the fast pace with which technology is advancing in the care field, it is critical to conduct more research in this area. Impact Statement: Robots will increasingly have a role to play in nursing, health and social care. The potential impact will be challenging for the healthcare workforce. It is therefore important for nurses and other health and social care workers to engage in discussion regarding the contribution of robots and their impact not only on nursing care but also on future roles of health and social care workers.
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(2018): Extension of grounding mechanism for abstract words: Computational methods insights. In: Artificial Intelligence Review 50 (3), S. 467-494. DOI: 10.1007/s10462-017-9608-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-017-9608-9 Abstract: The attempts to model cognitive phenomena effectively have split the research community in two paradigms: symbolic and connectionist. The extension of grounding phenomenon for abstract words is very important for social interactions of cognitive robots in real scenarios. This paper reviews the strength of symbolic and connectionist methods to address the abstract word grounding problem in cognitive robots. In particular, the presented work is focused on designing and simulating cognitive robotics model to achieve a grounding mechanism for abstract words by using the semantic network approach, as well as examining the utility of connectionist computation for the same problem. Two neuro-robotics models based on feed forward neural network and recurrent neural network are presented to see the pros and cons of connectionist approach. The simulation results and review of attributes of these methods reveal that the proposed symbolic model offers the solution to the problem of grounding abstract words with attributes like high data storage capacity with recall accuracy, structural integrity and temporal sequence handling. Whereas, connectionist computation based solutions give more natural solution to this problem with some shortcomings that include combinatorial ambiguity, low storage capacity and structural rigidity. The presented results are not only important for the advancement in communication system of cognitive robot, also provide evidence for embodied nature of abstract language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018) : Moral robots In: Johnson, L. Syd M.; Rommelfanger, Karen S. (Hg.): The Routledge handbook of neuroethics: New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group (Routledge handbooks in applied ethics), S. 363-377
Abstract: The main reason for raising the question about the ethical behavior of robots is the rapid progress in the development of autonomous social robots that are specifically created to be deployed in sensitive human environments, from elder and health care settings to law enforcement and military contexts. Clearly, such tasks and environments are very different from traditional factory environments (for example, for welding robots). Hence, these new social robots will require higher degrees of autonomy (i.e., a capacity for independent, self-directed action) and decision-making than any previously developed machine, given that they will face a much more complex, open world. They might be required to acquire new knowledge on the fly to accomplish a never-before-encountered task. Moreover, they will likely face humans who are not specifically trained to interact with them, and robots thus need to be responsive to instructions by novices and feel ’natural’ to humans even in unstructured interactions. At these levels of autonomy and flexibility in near-future robots, there will be countless ways in which robots might make mistakes, violate a user’s expectations and moral norms, or threaten the user’s physical or psychological safety. These social robots must therefore also be moral robots. Thus, for autonomous social robots deployed in human societies, three key questions arise: (1) What moral expectations do humans have for social robots? (2) What moral competence can and should such robots realize? (3) What should be the moral standing of these machines (if any)? The first question, about moral expectations, follows from the well-established fact that autonomous social robots, especially those with natural-language abilities, are treated in many ways like humans, regardless of whether such treatment was intended or anticipated by the robot designers. In fact, there is mounting evidence that humans have very clear expectations of robot capacities based on the robot’s appearance and people’s perceptions of the robot behaviors. We will review some of this work in the third section. The second question, about moral competence, arises from the need to endow robots with sufficient capacities to operate safely in human societies. Answers to this question would ideally build on answers to the first question and provide mechanisms for robots to process social and moral norms in ways that humans expect. In addition, the design of the robots’ control systems should ensure that robots behave ethically according to the norms of the society in which they are deployed. In this chapter, we will focus on the first two questions, discussing both human expectations and computational architectural mechanisms that will allow robots to live up to those expectations while leaving a detailed discussion of the third question to legal experts and philosophers We will not focus on the philosophical debate about agency and personhood. Rather, we will assume an operational behavioral definition of a ’moral robot’. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): An architecture for ethical robots inspired by the simulation theory of cognition. In: COGNITIVE SYSTEMS RESEARCH 48, S. 56-66. DOI: 10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.04.002
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.04.002 Abstract: The expanding ability of robots to take unsupervised decisions renders it imperative that mechanisms are in place to guarantee the safety of their behaviour. Moreover, intelligent autonomous robots should be more than safe; arguably they should also be explicitly ethical. In this paper, we put forward a method for implementing ethical behaviour in robots inspired by the simulation theory of cognition. In contrast to existing frameworks for robot ethics, our approach does not rely on the verification of logic statements. Rather, it utilises internal simulations which allow the robot to simulate actions and predict their consequences. Therefore, our method is a form of robotic imagery. To demonstrate the proposed architecture, we implement a version of this architecture on a humanoid NAO robot so that it behaves according to Asimov’s laws of robotics. In a series of four experiments, using a second NAO robot as a proxy for the human, we demonstrate that the Ethical Layer enables the robot to prevent the human from coming to harm in simple test scenarios. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2018): Technology with embodied physical actions: Understanding interactions and effectiveness gains in teams working with robots. ProQuest Information & Learning.
Abstract: Teams in different areas are increasingly adopting robots to perform various mission operations. The inclusion of robots in teams has drawn consistent attention from scholars in relevant fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and human-robot interaction (HRI). Yet, the current literature has not fully addressed issues regarding teamwork by mainly focusing on the collaboration between a single robot and an individual. The limited scope of human-robot collaboration in the existing research hinders uncovering the mechanism of performance gains in teams that involve multiple robots and people. This dissertation research is an effort to address the issue by achieving two goals. First, this dissertation examines the impacts of interaction between human teammates alone and interaction between humans and robots on outcomes in teams working with robots. Second, I provide insight into the development of teams working with robots by examining ways to promote a team member’s intention to work with robots. In this dissertation, I conducted three studies in an endeavor to accomplish the aforementioned goals. The first study, in Chapter 2, turns to theory trust in teams to explain outcome gains in teams working with robots. This study reports result from a lab experiment, in which two people fulfilled a collaborative task using two robots. The results show that trust in robots and trust in teammates can be enhanced by a robot-building activity and team identification, respectively. The enhanced trust revealed unique impacts on different team outcomes: trust in robots increased only team performance while trust in teammates increased only satisfaction. Theoretical and practical contributions of the findings are discussed in the chapter. The second study, in Chapter 3, uncovers how team member’s efficacy beliefs interplay with team diversity to promote performance in teams working with robots. Results from a lab experiment reveal that individual operator’s performance is enhanced by team potency perception only when the team is ethnically diverse. This study contributes to theory by identifying team diversity as a limiting condition of performance gains for robot operators in teams. The third study, in Chapter 4, focuses on factors leading to the development of teams working with robots. I conducted an online experiment to examine how surface-level and deep-level similarity contribute to trust in a robotic partner and the impact of the trust on a team member’s intention to work with the robot in varying degrees of danger. This study generally shows that the possibility of danger regulates not only the positive link between the surface-level similarity and trust in robot and but also the link between intention to work with the robot and intention to replace a human teammate with the robot. Chapter 5, as a concluding chapter of this dissertation, discusses the theoretical and practical implications drawn from the three studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)