Related papers: Towards More Realistic Human-Robot Conversation: A…
Co-speech gesture video generation aims to synthesize realistic, audio-aligned videos of speakers, complete with synchronized facial expressions and body gestures. This task presents challenges due to the significant one-to-many mapping…
Emotion expressions serve as important communicative signals and are crucial cues in intuitive interactions between humans. Hence, it is essential to include these fundamentals in robotic behavior strategies when interacting with humans to…
In this work, we present preliminary work on a novel method for Human-Swarm Interaction (HSI) that can be used to change the macroscopic behavior of a swarm of robots with decentralized sensing and control. By integrating a small yet…
We propose the first approach to automatically and jointly synthesize both the synchronous 3D conversational body and hand gestures, as well as 3D face and head animations, of a virtual character from speech input. Our algorithm uses a CNN…
Robots can learn preferences from human demonstrations, but their success depends on how informative these demonstrations are. Being informative is unfortunately very challenging, because during teaching, people typically get no…
Robotic systems can enhance the amount and repeatability of physically guided motor training. Yet their real-world adoption is limited, partly due to non-intuitive trainer/therapist-trainee/patient interactions. To address this gap, we…
Natural co-speech gestures are essential components to improve the experience of Human-robot interaction (HRI). However, current gesture generation approaches have many limitations of not being natural, not aligning with the speech and…
There is a growing need for social robots and intelligent agents that can effectively interact with and support users. For the interactions to be seamless, the agents need to analyse social scenes and behavioural cues from their (robot's)…
This research explores using lightweight deep neural network architectures to enable the humanoid robot Pepper to understand American Sign Language (ASL) and facilitate non-verbal human-robot interaction. First, we introduce a lightweight…
Motion imitation is a pivotal and effective approach for humanoid robots to achieve a more diverse range of complex and expressive movements, making their performances more human-like. However, the significant differences in kinematics and…
Social interactions play a crucial role in shaping human behavior, relationships, and societies. It encompasses various forms of communication, such as verbal conversation, non-verbal gestures, facial expressions, and body language. In this…
How human-like do conversational robots need to look to enable long-term human-robot conversation? One essential aspect of long-term interaction is a human's ability to adapt to the varying degrees of a conversational partner's engagement…
One of the first and foremost non-verbal interactions that humans perform is a handshake. It has an impact on first impressions as touch can convey complex emotions. This makes handshaking an important skill for the repertoire of a social…
Strategies are necessary to mitigate the impact of unexpected behavior in collaborative robotics, and research to develop solutions is lacking. Our aim here was to explore the benefits of an affective interaction, as opposed to a more…
Receiving a hug is one of the best ways to feel socially supported, and the lack of social touch can have severe negative effects on an individual's well-being. Based on previous research both within and outside of HRI, we propose six…
Humanoid robots are designed to be relatable to humans for applications such as customer support and helpdesk services. However, many such systems, including Softbank's Pepper, fall short because they fail to communicate effectively with…
High-fidelity digital humans are increasingly used in interactive applications, yet achieving both visual realism and real-time responsiveness remains a major challenge. We present a high-fidelity, real-time conversational digital human…
In this paper, we propose a novel text-based talking-head video generation framework that synthesizes high-fidelity facial expressions and head motions in accordance with contextual sentiments as well as speech rhythm and pauses. To be…
Social touch provides a rich non-verbal communication channel between humans and robots. Prior work has identified a set of touch gestures for human-robot interaction and described them with natural language labels (e.g., stroking,…
Sign language is a natural and visual form of language that uses movements and expressions to convey meaning, serving as a crucial means of communication for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH). However, the number of people…