‘How Would you Score Yourself?’: The Effect of Self-assessment Strategy Through Robots on Children’s Motivation and Performance in Piano Practice

This research examines how to design social robots to support self-regulated learning skills for piano practice. More specifically, a social robot is used to provide feedback to children and initiate self-assessment. To assess the impact of this approach on children’s motivation and performance, we conducted an experiment in a music school...

The seven troubles with norm-compliant robots

Many researchers from robotics, machine ethics, and adjacent fields seem to assume that norms represent good behavior that social robots should learn to benefit their users and society. We would like to complicate this view and present seven key troubles with norm-compliant robots: (1) norm biases, (2) paternalism (3) tyrannies of the majority, ...

Programmed to do good: The categorical imperative as a key to moral behavior of social robots

Social robots—such as autonomous vehicles, service robots, or healthcare robots—are designed to support tasks in a broad range of human activities. However, these robots face moral dilemmas because they must make decisions that may do good for one human but potentially inflict harm on another. We argue that Kant's categorical imperative provides...

What factors contribute to the acceptance of artificial intelligence? A systematic review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents are predicted to infiltrate most industries within the next decade, creating a personal, industrial, and social shift towards the new technology. As a result, there has been a surge of interest and research towards user acceptance of AI technology in recent years. However, the existing research appears...

Integrative Robo-Ethics: Uncovering Roboticists’ Attitudes to Ethics and Moving Forward

This article proposes an integrative approach to robotics research, based on bringing interdisciplinarity into the lab. Such an approach will facilitate researchers across various fields in gaining a more nuanced understanding of technology, how it is developed, and its potential impacts. We describe how a philosopher spent time embedded in...

Getting acquainted: First steps for child-robot relationship formation

In this article we discuss two studies of children getting acquainted with an autonomous socially assistive robot. The success of the first encounter is key for a sustainable long-term supportive relationship. We provide four validated behavior design elements that enable the robot to robustly get acquainted with the child. The first are five...

Resonance as a Design Strategy for AI and Social Robots

Resonance, a powerful and pervasive phenomenon, appears to play a major role in human interactions. This article investigates the relationship between the physical mechanism of resonance and the human experience of resonance, and considers possibilities for enhancing the experience of resonance within human–robot interactions. We first...

Social robots as eating companions

Previous research shows that eating together (i.e., commensality) impacts food choice, time spent eating, and enjoyment. Conversely, eating alone is considered a possible cause of unhappiness. In this paper, we conceptually explore how interactive technology might allow for the creation of artificial commensal companions: embodied agents...

Interactive Education on Sleep Hygiene with a Social Robot at a Pediatric Oncology Outpatient Clinic: Feasibility, Experiences, and Preliminary Effectiveness

Objectives: Children with cancer often experience sleep problems, which are associated with many negative physical and psychological health outcomes, as well as with a lower quality of life. Therefore, interventions are strongly required to improve sleep in this population. We evaluated interactive education with respect to sleep hygiene with...

A Feasibility Study of a Social Robot Collecting Patient Reported Outcome Measurements from Older Adults

Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) are an essential means for collecting information on the effectiveness of hospital care as perceived by the patients themselves. Especially older adult patients often require help from nursing staff to successfully complete PROMs, but this staff already has a high work load. Therefore, a social robot...

A video-based assessment of likeability and usability in a play application of robots for children

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to conduct research with children, who have different abilities from adults, in terms of language understanding and level of attention, is a challenging task, especially concerning novel interactive systems such as social robots. Consequently, self-reporting methods are often replaced or supplemented by...

A Semblance of Aliveness: How the Peculiar Embodiment of Sex Robots Will Matter

While the design of sex robots is still in the early stages, the social implications of the potential proliferation of sex robots into our lives has been heavily debated by activists and scholars from various disciplines. What is missing in the current debate on sex robots and their potential impact on human social relations is a targeted...

Mood contagion of robot body language in human robot interaction

The aim of our work is to design bodily mood expressions of humanoid robots for interactive settings that can be recognized by users and have (positive) effects on people who interact with the robots. To this end, we develop a parameterized behavior model for humanoid robots to express mood through body language. Different settings of the...

Designing Robot Embodiments for Social Interaction: Affordances Topple Realism and Aesthetics

In the near future, human-like social robots will become indispensable for providing support in various social tasks, in particular for healthcare (e.g., assistance, coaching). The perception of realism, in particular human-like features, can help facilitate mediated social interaction. The current study investigated the effects of form realism...