Robot Assisted Sing-along for Groups of Individuals with Dementia: Real-time Engagement Detection and Re-engagement in Human Robot Interaction

Cognitive Impairment, commonly termed as Dementia, affects a large number of older adults. People with dementia (PwD) experience cognitive decline that impacts their ability to perform daily activities and maintain social connections. The number of PwD is expected to rise, and unfortunately, there is still no cure. A number of non drug therapies...

Social Engagement in Children-Robot Interaction Over Multiple Sessions

With the advancement of technology and the integration of Large Language Models, interactive robots are entrusted with more significant tasks that contribute to human well-being. This transition is particularly significant in educational settings, where social robots assume diverse roles such as teacher, tutor, and instructional tool, aiming to...

Interactive Intelligence: Multimodal AI for Real-Time Interaction Loop towards Attentive E-Reading

E-learning has shifted the traditional learning paradigms in higher education, offering more flexible, ubiquitous, and personalized learning experiences. The previous years COVID-19 pandemic required a re-calibration of education to accommodate virtual learning environments from the traditional classroom-based education. Widespread learning...

Levels of joint attention in an interaction between humans and an animal-like social robot

Joint attention is the shared focus multiple people can have on the same object and it is subconsciously used by humans every day. The simple act of verbally or non-verbally pointing out an object to one another, is a form of joint attention. Its use facilitates human cooperation, such as when someone needs to hand over an object to another...

Memorable moment detection using eye gaze in child-robot interactions

Robots in classroom settings can help teachers with providing personalised attention to children's health and development. As part of this personalisation, robots should store and use (verbal or multi-modal) information about the children they interact with. One aspect that has been unexplored in existing literature is the detection of memorable...

Industry 4.0 and workplace inclusivity: Assessing the effect of institutions on the implementation and use of robots to employ a diverse workforce

The increasing use of robots in the workplace presents a valuable opportunity to diversify the workforce by including underrepresented groups such as ethnic minorities and the elder population. However, high unemployment among these social groups shows that the opportunity to boost inclusivity and diversity is not grasped. Seizing this...

2^ndInternational Workshop on Designerly HRI Knowledge. Reflecting on HRI practices through Annotated Portfolios of Robotic Artefacts

We propose a workshop stemming from ongoing conversations about the role of design methods and designed artefacts within the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Given the growing interest in understanding what the field can learn from design explorations, the workshop focuses on hands-on annotating activity where participants (researchers...

Observing and Clustering Coaching Behaviours to Inform the Design of a Personalised Robotic Coach

Adherence to repetitive rehabilitation exercises is important in motor recovery after stroke. Similarly, repetitive solo practice exercises can improve the skill level of sports players. In both of these scenarios, regular human coaching has benefits, but in practice, the required training is often carried out alone, resulting in lowered...

Designerly ways of knowing in HRI: Broadening the scope of design-oriented HRI through the concept of intermediate-level knowledge

Interest in design methods and tools has been steadily growing in HRI. Yet, design is not acknowledged as a discipline with specific epistemology and methodology. Designerly HRI work is validated through user studies which, we argue, provide a limited account of the knowledge design produces. This paper aims to broaden current understanding...

Engagement in Human-Agent Interaction: An Overview

Engagement is a concept of the utmost importance in human-computer interaction, not only for informing the design and implementation of interfaces, but also for enabling more sophisticated interfaces capable of adapting to users. While the notion of engagement is actively being studied in a diverse set of domains, the term has been used to...

A topology of shared control systems: Finding common ground in diversity

Shared control is an increasingly popular approach to facilitate control and communication between humans and intelligent machines. However, there is little consensus in guidelines for design and evaluation of shared control, or even in a definition of what constitutes shared control. This lack of consensus complicates cross fertilization of...

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...

Robot Mood is Contagious: Effects of Robot Body Language in the Imitation Game

Mood contagion is an automatic mechanism that induces a congruent mood state by means of the observation of another person's emotional expression. In this paper, we address the question whether robot mood displayed during an imitation game can (a) be recognized by participants and (b) produce contagion effects. Robot mood was displayed by...

Fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton robots

This thesis is the first to provide the fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton design. The fundamental theory as well as technology necessary to analyze and develop ergonomic wearable robots interacting with humans is established and validated by experiments and prototypes. The fundamentals are (1) a new theoretical framework for analyzing...