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...

Eating with an artificial commensal companion

Commensality is defined as "a social group that eats together", and eating in a commensality setting has a number of positive effects on humans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of technology on commensality by presenting an experiment in which a toy robot showing non-verbal social behaviours tries to influence a...

Scheduling the Refuelling Activities of Multiple Heterogeneous Autonomous Mobile Robots

When a team of autonomous mobile robots (MRs) has to perform a mission of a duration that exceeds their energy capacities, the mission can only be fulfilled if the MRs are resupplied. Nowadays most MRs are powered by batteries, which can either be recharged, or replaced. Since it is not necessary that the MRs are battery powered, we will use the...