Related papers: The SPACE THEA Project
AI is promising in assisting UX evaluators with analyzing usability tests, but its judgments are typically presented as non-interactive visualizations. Evaluators may have questions about test recordings, but have no way of asking them.…
Despite advances in language and speech technologies, no open-source system enables full speech-to-speech, multi-turn dialogue with integrated tool use and agentic reasoning. We introduce AURA (Agent for Understanding, Reasoning, and…
In the rapidly evolving landscape of human-robot collaboration, effective communication between humans and robots is crucial for complex task execution. Traditional request-response systems often lack naturalness and may hinder efficiency.…
Virtual assistants (VAs) have become ubiquitous in daily life, integrated into smartphones and smart devices, sparking interest in AI companions that enhance user experiences and foster emotional connections. However, existing companions…
Voice assistants have been successfully adopted for simple, routine tasks, such as asking for the weather or setting an alarm. However, as people get more familiar with voice assistants, they may increase their expectations for more complex…
Since its inception in 2016, the Alexa Prize program has enabled hundreds of university students to explore and compete to develop conversational agents through the SocialBot Grand Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to build agents…
This article describes creating algorithmic support for the functioning of a personal virtual assistant, which allows automating the processing of customer requests. The study aims to reduce errors and processing time for a client request…
AI companion chatbots are increasingly used for emotional support, with prior work in the domain predominantly documenting their mixed psychosocial impacts, including both increased emotional expression and heightened loneliness. However,…
Recent development in developing humanoid robot poses new challenges to human-machine interaction communication. A major challenge is to develop robots that can behave like and interact with human in the most natural way possible. This…
Conversational chatbots are Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered applications that assist users with various tasks by responding in natural language and are prevalent across different industries. Most of the chatbots that we encounter on…
The European Space Agency is well known as a powerful force for scientific discovery in numerous areas related to Space. The amount and depth of the knowledge produced throughout the different missions carried out by ESA and their…
Research has shown that trust is an essential aspect of human-computer interaction directly determining the degree to which the person is willing to use the system. An automatic prediction of the level of trust that a user has on a certain…
This paper describes the capabilities and potential of the intelligent personal assistant (IPA) CORE (Checklist Organizer for Research and Exploration), designed to support astronauts during procedures onboard the International Space…
Moving to a new culture and adapting to a new life, as an international student, can be a stressful experience. In the US, international students face unique overlapping challenges, yet the current support ecosystem, including university…
The deployment and use of AI systems should be both safe and broadly ethically acceptable. The principles-based ethics assurance argument pattern is one proposal in the AI ethics landscape that seeks to support and achieve that aim. The…
Humanness is core to speech interface design. Yet little is known about how users conceptualise perceptions of humanness and how people define their interaction with speech interfaces through this. To map these perceptions n=21 participants…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have long been positioned as a tool to provide crucial data-driven decision support to people. In this survey paper, we look at how AI in general, and collaboration assistants (CAs or chatbots for…
Space exploration has advanced rapidly, but the emotional needs of astronauts on long-duration missions remain underexplored. We present ReHome Earth, a dual-component design approach addressing space homesickness: 1) a future-oriented…
Smart space management can be done in many ways. On one hand, there are conversational assistants such as the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa that enable users to comfortably interact with smart spaces with only their voice, but these have…
The increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in safety-critical contexts such as air-traffic control leads to systems that are practical and efficient, and to some extent explainable to humans to be trusted and accepted. The…