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Flying robots, such as quadrotor drones, offer new possibilities for human-robot interaction but often pose safety risks due to fast-spinning propellers, rigid structures, and noise. In contrast, lighter-than-air flapping-wing robots,…
The "Loving AI" project involves developing software enabling humanoid robots to interact with people in loving and compassionate ways, and to promote people' self-understanding and self-transcendence. Currently the project centers on the…
This study explores how human perceptions of a non-anthropomorphic robotic manipulator are shaped by two key dimensions of behaviour: arousal, defined as the robot's movement energy and expressiveness, and attention, defined as the robot's…
Knowledge from animals and humans inspires robotic innovations. Numerous efforts have been made to achieve agile locomotion in quadrupedal robots through classical controllers or reinforcement learning approaches. These methods usually rely…
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…
Often robots are seen as a means to an end to fulfill a logical objective task. Android robots, on the other hand, provide new possibilities to fulfill emotional tasks and could therefore be integrated into assistive scenarios. We explored…
AI companion chatbots, such as those offered by Replika and CharacterAI, increasingly function as always-available companions that provide empathy, validation, and support. While these systems appear to meet basic needs for connection,…
Creativity in social robots requires further attention in the interdisciplinary field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). This paper investigates the hypothesised connection between the perceived creative agency and the animacy of social…
Emotions are very important for human intelligence. For example, emotions are closely related to the appraisal of the internal bodily state and external stimuli. This helps us to respond quickly to the environment. Another important…
Affective tactile interaction constitutes a fundamental component of human communication. In natural human-human encounters, touch is seldom experienced in isolation; rather, it is inherently multisensory. Individuals not only perceive the…
This paper explores the concept of reflexive actuation, examining how robots may leverage both internal and external stimuli to trigger changes in the motion, performance, or physical characteristics of the robot, such as its size, shape,…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is a promising approach for developing legged locomotion skills. However, the iterative design process that is inevitable in practice is poorly supported by the default methodology. It is difficult to…
Recently, work on reinforcement learning (RL) for bipedal robots has successfully learned controllers for a variety of dynamic gaits with robust sim-to-real demonstrations. In order to maintain balance, the learned controllers have full…
This paper presents a gait controller for bipedal robots to achieve highly agile walking over various terrains given local slope and friction cone information. Without these considerations, untimely impacts can cause a robot to trip and…
Animal welfare education could greatly benefit from customized robots to help children learn about animals and their behavior, and thereby promote positive, safe child-animal interactions. To this end, we ran Participatory Design workshops…
Biomimetic entirely soft robots with animal-like behavior and integrated artificial nervous systems will open up totally new perspectives and applications. However, until now all presented studies on soft robots were limited to partly soft…
Increasing anthropomorphic robot behavioral design could affect trust and cooperation positively. However, studies have shown contradicting results and suggest a task-dependent relationship between robots that display emotions and trust.…
Emotional concepts play a huge role in our daily life since they take part into many cognitive processes: from the perception of the environment around us to different learning processes and natural communication. Social robots need to…
Robotics research has long sought to give robots the ability to perceive the physical world through touch in an analogous manner to many biological systems. Developing such tactile capabilities is important for numerous emerging…
An autonomous robot that is able to physically guide humans through narrow and cluttered spaces could be a big boon to the visually-impaired. Most prior robotic guiding systems are based on wheeled platforms with large bases with actuated…