Related papers: Using Virtual Reality to Simulate Human-Robot Emer…
The large number and scale of natural and man-made disasters have led to an urgent demand for technologies that enhance the safety and efficiency of search and rescue teams. Semi-autonomous rescue robots are beneficial, especially when…
It is common for large crowds to gather to attend games, exhibitions, political rallies, and other events. Thus, careful designs and operational plans are made to ensure the safe, secure, and efficient movement of people in these crowded…
As mobile service robots increasingly coexist with pedestrians, ensuring passively safe behaviour during confined emergency evacuations is critical. Existing multi-robot yielding strategies often focus solely on collision avoidance and…
Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a research platform for investigating human responses to environmental variables. While VR provides tremendous advantages in terms of variable isolation and manipulation, and ease of…
This paper explores the challenges faced by assistive robots in effectively cooperating with humans, requiring them to anticipate human behavior, predict their actions' impact, and generate understandable robot actions. The study focuses on…
We advance the understanding of robotic intervention in high-risk scenarios by examining their potential to distract and impede a school shooter. To evaluate this concept, we conducted a virtual reality study with 150 university…
We introduce a novel simulation-based approach to identify hazards that result from unexpected worker behavior in human-robot collaboration. Simulation-based safety testing must take into account the fact that human behavior is variable and…
Expressive behaviors in robots are critical for effectively conveying their emotional states during interactions with humans. In this work, we present a framework that autonomously generates realistic and diverse robotic emotional…
In human-robot collaborative interaction scenarios, nonverbal communication plays an important role. Both, signals sent by a human collaborator need to be identified and interpreted by the robotic system, and the signals sent by the robot…
Recently, there has been a growing interest in rescue robots due to their vital role in addressing emergency scenarios and providing crucial support in challenging or hazardous situations where human intervention is difficult. However, very…
Virtual environments (VEs) are making their way into various sectors of life to enhance and support human activity, including learning. VEs have been used in various contexts for training, and in many cases they are designed to model or…
Robots must operate safely when deployed in novel and human-centered environments, like homes. Current safe control approaches typically assume that the safety constraints are known a priori, and thus, the robot can pre-compute a…
Virtual reality (VR) interfaces for robots provide a three-dimensional (3D) view of the robot in its environment, which allows people to better plan complex robot movements in tight or cluttered spaces. In our prior work, we created a VR…
RL is increasingly being used to control robotic systems that interact closely with humans. This interaction raises the problem of safe RL: how to ensure that a RL-controlled robotic system never, for instance, injures a human. This problem…
Object handover is a common form of interaction that is widely present in collaborative tasks. However, achieving it efficiently remains a challenge. We address the problem of ensuring resilient robotic actions that can adapt to complex…
The evaluation of robot capabilities to navigate human crowds is essential to conceive new robots intended to operate in public spaces. This paper initiates the development of a benchmark tool to evaluate such capabilities; our long term…
Unthinking execution of human instructions in robotic manipulation can lead to severe safety risks, such as poisonings, fires, and even explosions. In this paper, we present responsible robotic manipulation, which requires robots to…
In the context of Intelligent Transportation Systems and the delivery of goods, new technology approaches need to be developed in order to cope with certain challenges that last mile delivery entails, such as navigation in an urban…
In recent years crowd modeling has become increasingly important both in the computer games industry and in emergency simulation. This paper discusses some aspects of what has been accomplished in this field, from social sciences to the…
Understanding how people view and interact with autonomous vehicles is important to guide future directions of research. One such way of aiding understanding is through simulations of virtual environments involving people and autonomous…