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One issue in aging is how to stimulate the cognitive skills of older adults. One way to address it is the use of serious games delivered through humanoid robots, to provide engaging ways to perform exercises to train memory, attention,…
Gestures are a natural form of communication between humans and can also be leveraged for human-robot interaction. This work presents a gesture-based user interface for object selection using pointing and click gestures. An experiment with…
This paper describes an experimental evaluation aimed at detecting the users' perception of the robot's empathic abilities during a conversation. The results have been then analyzed to search for a possible relationship between the…
Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…
Emotions are reactions that can be expressed through a variety of social signals. For example, anger can be expressed through a scowl, narrowed eyes, a long stare, or many other expressions. This complexity is problematic when attempting to…
Assistive robot arms can help humans by partially automating their desired tasks. Consider an adult with motor impairments controlling an assistive robot arm to eat dinner. The robot can reduce the number of human inputs -- and how precise…
Evaluating human-robot social interactions in a rigorous manner is notoriously difficult: studies are either conducted in labs with constrained protocols to allow for robust measurements and a degree of replicability, but at the cost of…
Contemporary robots are increasingly mimicking human social behaviours to facilitate interaction, such as smiling to signal approachability, or hesitating before taking an action to allow people time to react. Such techniques can activate a…
Prior efforts to create an autonomous computer system capable of predicting what a human being is thinking or feeling from facial expression data have been largely based on outdated, inaccurate models of how emotions work that rely on many…
People who need robots are often not the same as people who can program them. This key observation in human-robot interaction (HRI) has lead to a number of challenges when developing robotic applications, since developers must understand…
This project aims to motivate research in competitive human-robot interaction by creating a robot competitor that can challenge human users in certain scenarios such as physical exercise and games. With this goal in mind, we introduce the…
Emotions are the intrinsic or extrinsic representations of our experiences. The importance of emotions during a human-human interaction is immense as it formulates the basis of our interaction framework. There are several approaches in…
In our everyday lives we are accustomed to partake in complex, personalized, adaptive interactions with our peers. For a social robot to be able to recreate this same kind of rich, human-like interaction, it should be aware of our needs and…
In this paper we present an integrated robotic system capable of participating in and performing a wide range of educational and entertainment tasks, in collaboration with one or more children. The system, called ChildBot, features…
Computational thinking is increasingly introduced at primary school level, usually with some form of programming activity. In particular, educational robots provide an opportunity for engaging students with programming through hands-on…
Research in child-robot interactions suggests that engaging in "care-taking" of a social robot, such as tucking the robot in at night, can strengthen relationships formed between children and robots. In this work, we aim to better…
Robots often need to convey information to human users. For example, robots can leverage visual, auditory, and haptic interfaces to display their intent or express their internal state. In some scenarios there are socially agreed upon…
How can multiple humans interact with multiple robots? The goal of our research is to create an effective interface that allows multiple operators to collaboratively control teams of robots in complex tasks. In this paper, we focus on a key…
It is important for socially assistive robots to be able to recognize when a user needs and wants help. Such robots need to be able to recognize human needs in a real-time manner so that they can provide timely assistance. We propose an…
Is it possible to integrate a humanoid social robot into the work processes or customer care in an official environment, e.g. in municipal offices? If so, what could such an application scenario look like and what skills would the robot…