The role and relevance of speech synthesis and speech recognition in social robotics is addressed in this paper. To increase the generality of this study, the interaction of a human being with one and two robots when executing tasks was considered. By making use of these scenarios, a state-of-the-art speech synthesizer was compared with non-linguistic utterances (1) from the human preference and (2)

Automation is not a new phenomenon, and questions about its effects have long followed its advances. More than a half-century ago, US President Lyndon B. Johnson established a national commission to examine the impact of technology on the economy, declaring that automation “can be the ally of our prosperity if we will just look ahead”. In this paper, our premise is that we are at a technological inflection

Socially Assistive Robots are promising in their potential to promote and support mental health in children. There is a growing number of studies investigating the feasibility and effectiveness of robot interventions in supporting children’s mental wellbeing. Although preliminary evidence suggests that Socially Assistive Robots may have the potential to help address concerns such as stress and anxiety

To more efficiently enhance the patient transfer skills of nursing students, this study aims to integrate a transfer skills evaluation system and a robot patient. The evaluation parameters, namely, the translational acceleration of the waist, rotational speed of the chest, and joint angles of the shoulder, hip, and knee, were selected on the basis of the pre-experimental results obtained with a simulated

This paper is an extension to our work presented in Ben Slimane and Tagina (in: Nguyen, Pimenidis, Khan and Trawiński (eds) Computational collective intelligence, Springer, Cham, 2018). It deals with the the problem of partitioning the space in an even way between a number of autonomous mobile robots. In our previous work we proposed a distributed one-phased partitioning method where each robot constructs

Human–robot interaction has extended its application horizon to simplify how human beings interact with each other through a remotely controlled telepresence robot. The fast growth of communication technologies such as 4G and 5G has elevated the potential to establish stable audio–video-data transmission. However, human–robot physical interactions are still challenging regarding maneuverability, controllability

Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others’ mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with nonhuman agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, which enhances the relevance of social cues and improves

Previous research suggests that the increased attribution of agency to robots may be linked to negative attitudes toward robots. If robots are truly expected to assume various roles in our social environment, it is necessary to further explore how increasing agency, for example through increasing levels of autonomy, affects attitudes toward them. This study investigates the role of perceived control

As the field of social robotics has been dynamically growing and expanding over various areas of research and application, in which robots can be of assistance and companionship for humans, this paper offers a different perspective on a role that social robots can also play, namely the role of informing us about flexibility of human mechanisms of social cognition. The paper focuses on studies in which

The rapid development of artificial intelligence brings with it the increasing likelihood of ubiquitous interaction between humans and robots. A significant contribution to studying human–robot interactions (HRI) comes from experimental studies, whereby humans and robots interact in controlled conditions and researchers observe and measure the reactions of humans (and robots). The use of experiments

This paper explores the expressive capabilities of a swarm of miniature mobile robots within the context of inter-robot interactions and their mapping to the so-called fundamental emotions. In particular, we investigate how motion asnd shape descriptors that are psychologically associated with different emotions can be incorporated into different swarm behaviors for the purpose of artistic expositions

While teleoperated robots continue to proliferate in domains including search and rescue, field exploration, or the military, human error remains a primary cause for accidents or mistakes. One challenge is that teleoperating a remote robot is cognitively taxing as the operator needs to understand the robot’s state and monitor all its sensor data. In a multi-robot team, an operator needs to additionally

Robotic systems are one of the core technologies that will shape our future. Robots already change our private and professional life by working together with humans in various domains. Evoked by this increasing trend, great variability exists in terms of robots and interaction scenarios. This has boosted research regarding shaping factors of human–robot interaction (HRI). Nevertheless, this variety

With the rise of integration of robots in our daily lives, people find their own ways of normalizing their interaction with artificial agents, one of which is attributing mind to them. Research has shown that attributing mind to an artificial agent improves the flow of the interaction and alters behavior following it. However, little is known about the the influence of the interaction context and the

Social robots are increasingly used in educational settings, but research on human–robot interaction in schools has largely focused on robotic functions and effects. Teacher attitudes towards robots are an important factor in determining the effectiveness of robot-related classroom interventions. In this paper we assessed the usefulness of the Negative Attitudes Toward Robots Scale (NARS) for use in

The basic routine movements for elderly people are not easily accessible due to the weak muscles and impaired nerves in their lower extremity. In the last few years, many robotic-based rehabilitation devices, like orthosis and exoskeletons, have been designed and developed by researchers to provide locomotion assistance to support gait behavior and to perform daily activities for elderly people. However

Numerous researches have studied the development of robotics, especially socially assistive robots (SAR), including the NAO robot. This small humanoid robot has a great potential in social assistance. The NAO robot’s features and capabilities, such as motricity, functionality, and affective capacities, have been studied in various contexts. The principal aim of this study is to gather every research

Scene understanding is a fundamental challenge for intelligent robots, especially for social robots, which are expected to have a human-like perception, comprehension, and knowledge. This paper proposes an approach to enable robots not only to detect objects in a scene but also to understand and reason the working environments. The proposed method contains three parts, which are object detection, object

Among of the factors that affect likeability, reciprocal response towards the other party is one of the multiple variables involved in social interaction. However, in HRI, likeability is constrained to robot behavior, since mass-produced robots will have identical physical embodiment. A reciprocal robot response is desirable in order to design robots as likeable agents for humans. In this paper, we

Social robots become increasingly human-like in appearance and behaviour. However, a large body of research shows that these robots tend to elicit negative feelings of eeriness, danger, and threat. In the present study, we explored whether and how human-like appearance and mind-attribution contribute to these negative feelings and clarified possible underlying mechanisms. Participants were presented

Social Robots (SRs) are substantially becoming part of modern society, given their frequent use in many areas of application including education, communication, assistance, and entertainment. The main challenge in human–robot interaction is in achieving human-like and affective interaction between the two groups. This study is aimed at endowing SRs with the capability of assessing the emotional state

As social robots become more common, there is a need to understand how people perceive and interact with such technology. This systematic review seeks to estimate people’s attitudes toward, trust in, anxiety associated with, and acceptance of social robots; as well as factors that are associated with these beliefs. Ninety-seven studies were identified with a combined sample of over 13,000 participants

Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to understand others’ mental states (e.g., intentions). Studies on human ToM show that the way we understand others’ mental states is very efficient, in the sense that observing only some portion of others’ behaviors can lead to successful performance. Recently, ToM has gained interest in robotics to build robots that can engage in complex social interactions. Although

Most studies on socially assistive robots (SARs) in elder care are conducted in care homes and recruit participants with some degree of cognitive impairment. The ethical dimension in these studies thus requires careful attention, suggesting that the researchers involved should be offered specific research ethics training. To meet this need in CARESSES—an international multidisciplinary project that

The paper has two main objectives: to examine the challenges arising from the use of carebots as well as to discuss how the design of carebots can deal with these challenges. First, it notes that the use of carebots to take care of the physical and mental health of the elderly, children and the disabled as well as to serve as assistive tools and social companions encounter a few main challenges. They

As the roles of social robots are increasingly diverse, it is important to design the robots according to their application fields and end-users needs. A robot’s voice is a strong social cue, the design of which can influence people’s affective evaluation and acceptance toward robots. The aim of this study is to investigate the affective evaluation of different robot voices in various application fields

This study examined whether interacting with a humanoid robot influences children’s gaze aversion, an effortless strategy that people commonly use to facilitate thinking when asked challenging questions. Following the intentional stance model, we hypothesized that interacting with agents perceived as having a mind would modulate the social relevance assigned by the children to their interlocutor. Accordingly

Information technology, including digital devices, robots, and the internet, is of great interest in the field of education. Many previous studies have focused on improving lecturer–student communication during lectures. In this paper, we describe a new robot-teleoperation system for transferring students’ opinions or questions to the lecturer. Through this system, users can collaboratively choose

The increasing pressure on healthcare systems calls for innovative solutions, such as social robots. However, healthcare situations often are highly emotional while little is known about how people’s prior emotional state may affect the perception and acceptance of such robots. Following appraisal theories of emotion, the appraisal of coping potential related to one’s emotions was found to be important

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;

Play is a common activity providing not only pleasure but also physical and cognitive development. In the quest for new playing experiences, there is an increasing tendency to develop robots playing with people. Making believable playing robots able to keep human players engaged and satisfied by the playing experience is the main challenge. In this work, we investigate the possibilities of a playful

Robotics technology has gained significance in educational environments in recent years. Educational robotics provide students with the opportunity to collaborate in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) oriented activities. This study aims to examine the effects of robotics training on children’s spatial ability and attitude toward STEM. A one-group pretest–posttest design, a type

The present research studies the attribution of credit for success and attribution of blame for failure in a human–robot group. In the experiment, two participants of the same gender and a robot composed of a group that cooperated to solve the desert survival problem. Each group completed two tasks whose outcomes were manipulated: one task succeeded, and the other task failed. The participants were

Physical contact like touching and hugging plays an essential role in social bonding between people by encouraging interactions and self-disclosure. However, in a human–robot interaction context, it remains unknown whether physical activity with robots provides such similar effects, even though several positive effects of touch interactions have been unveiled. Therefore, we used a hugging robot that

In this paper, a control architecture called Robotic Hybrid Indoor-Zone Operational ModulE (RHIZOME) is proposed as a new control paradigm capable of easy adaptation to different scenarios where a robot is able to interact with its environment and other cognitive agents while coping with possible unexpected situations. It creates a synergy of different state-of-the-art control paradigms by merging

The research community of human-robot interaction relies on theories and phenomena from the social sciences in order to study and validate robotic developments in interaction. These studies mainly concerned one (human) on one (robot) interactions in the past. The present paper shifts the attention to groups and group dynamics and reviews relevant concepts from the social sciences: ingroup identification

Many social robots have emerged in public places to serve people. For these services, the robots are assumed to be able to present internal aspects (i.e., mind, sociability) to engage and interact with people over the long term. In this paper, we propose a novel dialogue structure called experience-based dialogue to help a robot present and maintain a good interaction over the long term. This dialogue

The use of robots and in particular next-generation robots in the production of goods and services is increasing. What impact robots are having on people’s quality of life, including workers, is as yet under-explored. This paper provides initial findings examining whether fear of robots is correlated with one aspect of quality of life: life satisfaction. After controlling for individual effects and

Care robots are often portrayed as an exciting new technology for improving care practices. Whether these robots will be accepted and integrated into care work or not, is likely to be affected by the assumptions, expectations and understandings held by potential end users, such as frontline staff and the people that are cared for. This paper describes how the conceptual framework of technological frames

As robots begin to enter roles in which they work closely with human teammates or peers, it is critical to understand how people trust them based on how they interpret the robot’s behavior. In this paper we investigated the interplay between trust in a robot and people’s perceptions of the robot’s emotional intelligence. We used a vignette-based method to explore the following questions: (1) Do subjects

The indoor environmental quality (IEQ) monitoring inside buildings where people spend most of their time is essential for ensuring their well-being. Traditional approaches based on Building Automation and Control Systems consider buildings equipped with many different sensors. Unfortunately, the sensors are not always placed for taking the measurements at the right positions. Besides, users could feel

Four different interaction styles for the social robot Furhat acting as a host in spoken conversation practice with two simultaneous language learners have been developed, based on interaction styles of human moderators of language cafés. We first investigated, through a survey and recorded sessions of three-party language café style conversations, how the interaction styles of human moderators are

Research findings suggest that robots can enhance interventions targeted at children with autism spectrum disorder. A pilot study was conducted at a special needs school to examine the effect of robot KASPAR on making contact with children with autism. Nine children between 8 and 12 years of age participated in this mixed methods study with ABAB design. Children participated in 4 sessions, two with

We propose a robot-mediated therapy and assessment system for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) of mild to moderate severity and minimal verbal capabilities. The objectives of the robot interaction sessions is to improve the academic capabilities of ASD patients by increasing the length and the quality of their attention. The system uses a NAO robot and an added mobile display to present

A key feature of the humanoid social robot is its face. A robot face is not simply a technical choice, as faces communicate identity, affect and interpersonal spatial relations, and can be key to perceptions about the virtuousness of the robot. To address the significance of the robot face we develop a transdisciplinary reading of faces that compares how science, art and philosophy offer critical knowledges

The relationship between religions and science can be considered historically controversial in nature. In constantly evolving global societies, it is important to provide a new perspective on the past and present relationship between religions and technological developments in the different societies. In this regard, this paper will provide insights into the different ways in which ancient societies

There is a close connection between health and the quality of one's social life. Strong social bonds are essential for health and wellbeing, but often health conditions can detrimentally affect a person's ability to interact with others. This can become a vicious cycle resulting in further decline in health. For this reason, the social management of health is an important aspect of healthcare. We propose

In previous work, drawing on virtue ethics, I have argued that we may demonstrate morally significant vices in our treatment of robots. Even if an agent’s “cruel” treatment of a robot has no implications for their future behaviour towards people or animals, I believe that it may reveal something about their character, which in turn gives us reason to criticise their actions. Viciousness towards robots

The quality of a companion robot’s reaction is important to make it acceptable to the users and to sustain interactions. Furthermore, the robot’s reaction can be used to train socially acceptable behaviors and to develop certain skills in both normally developing children and children with cognitive disabilities. In this study, we investigate the influence of reaction time in the emotional response

Abstract Physical interaction in Human Robot Interaction is a predominant factor to determine the existence of collaboration between humans and robots. However, a prolonged physical interaction may lead humans to experience what is called as pain which possibly arises due to uncoordinated movements between humans and robots, internal humans’ physical constraints or other feasible causes. This paper

Recent technological advances enabled modern robots to become part of our daily life. In particular, assistive robotics emerged as an exciting research topic that can provide solutions to improve the quality of life of elderly and vulnerable people. This paper introduces the robotic platform developed in the ENRICHME project, with particular focus on its innovative perception and interaction capabilities

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

Social Assistive Robots are starting to be widely used for paediatric health-care. In this setting, the development of effective strategies to engage and remain compelling during the interaction is still an open research area since, in the case of an incoming medical procedure, children could be in an anxiety state. In this work, the proposed strategy relies on the use of a social robot interacting

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in deploying robotic systems in public environments able to effectively interact with people. To properly work in the wild, such systems should be robust and be able to deal with complex and unpredictable events that seldom happen in controlled laboratory conditions. Moreover, having to deal with untrained users adds further complexity to the problem

Autonomous robots are nowadays successfully used in industrial environments, where tasks follow predetermined plans and the world is a known (and closed) set of objects. The context of social robotics brings new challenges to the robot. First of all, the world is no longer closed. New objects can be introduced at any time, and it is now impossible to build an exaustive list of them nor having a precomputed

The introduction of artificial teammates in the form of autonomous social robots, with fewer social abilities compared to humans, presents new challenges for human–robot team dynamics. A key characteristic of high performing human-only teams is their ability to establish, develop, and calibrate trust over long periods of time, making the establishment of longitudinal human–robot team trust calibration

This paper presents a contribution aiming at testing novel child–robot teaching schemes that could be used in future studies to support the development of social and collaborative skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We present a novel experiment where the classical roles are reversed: in this scenario the children are the teachers providing positive or negative reinforcement to

Social robots, those that exhibit personality and communicate with us using high-level dialogue and natural cues, will soon be part of our daily lives. In this paper, we gather expert opinions from different international workshops exploring ethical, legal, and social (ELS) concerns associated with social robots. In contrast to literature that looks at specific challenges, often from a certain disciplinary

This paper presents a sign recognition system for a sign tutoring assistive humanoid robot. In this study, a specially designed 5-fingered robot platform with expressive face (Robovie R3) is used for interaction and communication with deaf or hard of hearing children using signs and visual cues. The robot is able to recognize and generate accurately a selected set of signs from Turkish sign language

The field of social robotics promises robots that can interact with humans in a variety of naturalistic ways, due to their embodiment, considered form, and social abilities. For providing a satisfaction survey, when compared to a web-based form, a social robot is theoretically capable of providing some of the benefits of a face-to-face interview without requiring a human. In this paper we set up our