Related papers: Can User-Centered Reinforcement Learning Allow a R…

Mobile service robots are increasingly prevalent in human-centric, real-world domains, operating autonomously in unconstrained indoor environments. In such a context, robotic vision plays a central role in enabling service robots to…

In recent years, various service robots have been introduced in stores as recommendation systems. Previous studies attempted to increase the influence of these robots by improving their social acceptance and trust. However, when such…

To be capable of lifelong learning in a real-life environment, robots have to tackle multiple challenges. Being able to relate physical properties they may observe in their environment to possible interactions they may have is one of them.…

This letter presents a physical human-robot interaction scenario in which a robot guides and performs the role of a teacher within a defined dance training framework. A combined cognitive and physical feedback of performance is proposed for…

Interacting physically with robots and sharing environment with them leads to situations where humans and robots have to cross each other in narrow corridors. In these cases, the robot has to make space for the human to pass. From…

Aiming to explore the impact of politeness on Human robot interaction, this study tested varying levels of politeness in a human robot collaborative table setting task. Polite behaviour was designed based on the politeness rules of Lakoff.…

Adapting the User Interface (UI) of software systems to user requirements and the context of use is challenging. The main difficulty consists of suggesting the right adaptation at the right time in the right place in order to make it…

The adoption of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in several human-centred applications provides robots with autonomous decision-making capabilities and adaptability based on the observations of the operating environment. In such scenarios,…

Assistive robots have the potential to help people perform everyday tasks. However, these robots first need to learn what it is their user wants them to do. Teaching assistive robots is hard for inexperienced users, elderly users, and users…

Pedipulation leverages the feet of legged robots for mobile manipulation, eliminating the need for dedicated robotic arms. While previous works have showcased blind and task-specific pedipulation skills, they fail to account for static and…

While reinforcement learning (RL) has the potential to enable robots to autonomously acquire a wide range of skills, in practice, RL usually requires manual, per-task engineering of reward functions, especially in real world settings where…

Demonstration is an appealing way for humans to provide assistance to reinforcement-learning agents. Most approaches in this area view demonstrations primarily as sources of behavioral bias. But in sparse-reward tasks, humans seem to treat…

Assistive agents should make humans' lives easier. Classically, such assistance is studied through the lens of inverse reinforcement learning, where an assistive agent (e.g., a chatbot, a robot) infers a human's intention and then selects…

Controlling contact forces during interactions is critical for locomotion and manipulation tasks. While sim-to-real reinforcement learning (RL) has succeeded in many contact-rich problems, current RL methods achieve forceful interactions…

As the global population ages, many seniors face the problem of loneliness. Companion robots offer a potential solution. However, current companion robots often lack advanced functionality, while task-oriented robots are not designed for…

Social robots, also known as service or assistant robots, have been developed to improve the quality of human life in recent years. The design of socially capable and intelligent robots can vary, depending on the target user groups. In this…

Reinforcement learning (RL) agents aim at learning by interacting with an environment, and are not designed for representing or reasoning with declarative knowledge. Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) paradigms are strong in…

Robot crowd navigation has been gaining increasing attention and popularity in various practical applications. In existing research, deep reinforcement learning has been applied to robot crowd navigation by training policies in an online…

Imitation can allow us to quickly gain an understanding of a new task. Through a demonstration, we can gain direct knowledge about which actions need to be performed and which goals they have. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to…

Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise in training agentic models that move beyond static benchmarks to engage in dynamic, multi-turn interactions. Yet, the ultimate value of such agents lies in their ability to assist users, a…