Bonding with a Couchsurfing Robot: The Impact of Common Locus on Human-Robot Bonding In-the-Wild

Due to an increased presence of robots in human-inhabited environments, we observe a growing body of examples in which humans show behavior that is indicative of strong social engagement towards robots that do not possess any life-like realism in appearance or behavior. In response, we focus on the under-explored concept of a common locus as a...

Cyclists perception and self-reported behaviour towards interacting with fully automated vehicles

Fully automated vehicles (FAVs) have the potential to improve road safety and reduce traffic congestion and emissions. Most studies of acceptance of FAVs have focused on motor vehicle users, largely ignoring other road users, such as cyclists. This study investigates the factors that influence cyclists’ receptivity towards sharing roads with...

Error-Bounded Approximation of Pareto Fronts in Robot Planning Problems

Many problems in robotics seek to simultaneously optimize several competing objectives under constraints. A conventional approach to solving such multi-objective optimization problems is to create a single cost function comprised of the weighted sum of the individual objectives. Solutions to this scalarized optimization problem are Pareto...

Towards an Active Predictive Relation by Reconceptualizing a Vacuum Robot: Research on the Transparency and Acceptance of the Predictive Behaviors

With the development of Artificial intelligence, the connected objects are extended with the predictive capabilities and the character of things can change to “things that predict”. If a connected device is able to embrace a predictive system that not only profiles for scripted behavior but could also use the knowledge co-created by all the...

Biomechanics Aware Collaborative Robot System for Delivery of Safe Physical Therapy in Shoulder Rehabilitation

In this work, we explore using computational musculoskeletal modeling to equip an industrial collaborative robot with awareness of the internal state of a patient to safely deliver physical therapy. A major concern of robot-mediated physical therapy is that robots may unwittingly injure patients. For patients with shoulder injuries this...

A Study on Automated Receptionists in a Real-World Scenario

The commercial availability of robots and voice-operated smart devices such as Alexa or Google Home have some companies wondering whether they can replace some current human interactions by using these devices. One such area of interaction is at the reception desk. While both platforms can offer the necessary interaction features to take on...

Assistive arm-exoskeleton control based on human muscular manipulability

This paper introduces a novel control framework for an arm exoskeleton that takes into account force of the human arm. In contrast to the conventional exoskeleton controllers where the assistance is provided without considering the human arm biomechanical force manipulability properties, we propose a control approach based on the arm muscular...