Related papers: The SPACE THEA Project
Mindfulness meditation is a validated means of helping people manage stress. Voice-based virtual assistants (VAs) in smart speakers, smartphones, and smart environments can assist people in carrying out mindfulness meditation through guided…
The dialogue experience with conversational agents can be greatly enhanced with multimodal and immersive interactions in virtual reality. In this work, we present an open-source architecture with the goal of simplifying the development of…
Most online information sources are text-based and in Western Languages like English. However, many new and first time users of the Internet are in contexts with low English proficiency and are unable to access vital information online.…
This work presents and experimentally test the framework used by our context-aware, distributed team of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) capable of operating in real-time, in an autonomous fashion, and under constrained communications.…
The inclusion of voice persona in synthesized voice can be significant in a broad range of human-computer-interaction (HCI) applications, including augmentative and assistive communication (AAC), artistic performance, and design of virtual…
How should a robot speak in a formal, quiet and dark, or a bright, lively and noisy environment? By designing robots to speak in a more social and ambient-appropriate manner we can improve perceived awareness and intelligence for these…
As AI-enhanced technologies become common in a variety of domains, there is an increasing need to define and examine the trust that users have in such technologies. Given the progress in the development of AI, a correspondingly…
Emotions can provide a natural communication modality to complement the existing multi-modal capabilities of social robots, such as text and speech, in many domains. We conducted three online studies with 112, 223, and 151 participants to…
This is the preprint version of our paper on 3rd International Workshop on Virtual and Augmented Assistive Technology (VAAT) at IEEE Virtual Reality 2015 (VR2015). An assistive training tool for rehabilitation of dysphonic patients is…
AI-assisted usability analysis can potentially reduce the time and effort of finding usability problems, yet little is known about how AI's perceived expertise influences evaluators' analytic strategies and perceptions over time. We ran a…
Office Assistant Robots (OARs) offer a promising solution to proactively provide in-situ support to enhance employee well-being and productivity in office spaces. We introduce OfficeMate, a social OAR designed to assist with practical…
The delivery of mental health interventions via ubiquitous devices has shown much promise. A conversational chatbot is a promising oracle for delivering appropriate just-in-time interventions. However, designing emotionally-aware agents,…
Artificial intelligence (AI) based learning assistants and chatbots are increasingly integrated into higher education. While these tools are often evaluated in terms of technical performance, their successful and ethical use also depends on…
We describe experiments towards building a conversational digital assistant that considers the preferred conversational style of the user. In particular, these experiments are designed to measure whether users prefer and trust an assistant…
AI assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, are making their way into the healthcare sector, offering a convenient way for users to access different healthcare services. Trust is a vital factor in the uptake of healthcare…
Conversational agents (CAs) embodied in speakers or chatbots are becoming very popular in some countries, and despite their adult-centred design, they have become part of children's lives, generating a need for children-centric trustworthy…
Recent advances in conversational AI have been substantial, but developing real-time systems for perceptual task guidance remains challenging. These systems must provide interactive, proactive assistance based on streaming visual inputs,…
Non-native speakers (NNSs) frequently encounter speaking difficulties in multilingual communication, where existing approaches have shown promise in facilitating NNSs' comprehension and participation in real-time communication. However,…
While the English virtual assistants have achieved exciting performance with an enormous amount of training resources, the needs of non-English-speakers have not been satisfied well. Up to Dec 2021, Alexa, one of the most popular smart…
Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process which refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argue that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system, which simulates human inner…