Related papers: Human Autonomy as a Design Principle for Socially …

While social robots are developed to provide assistance to users through social interactions, their behaviors are dominantly pre-programmed and remote-controlled. Despite the numerous robot control architectures being developed, very few…

While there are many examples in which robots provide social assistance, a lack of theory on how the robots should decide how to assist impedes progress in realizing these technologies. To address this deficiency, we propose a pair of…

Living a self-determined life independent of human caregivers or fully autonomous robots is a crucial factor for human dignity and the preservation of self-worth for people with motor impairments. Assistive robotic solutions - particularly…

The concept of autonomy is key to the IoT vision promising increasing integration of smart services and systems minimizing human intervention. This vision challenges our capability to build complex open trustworthy autonomous systems. We…

Roboticists often design with the assumption that assistive robots should be fully autonomous. However, it remains unclear whether users prefer highly autonomous robots, as prior work in assistive robotics suggests otherwise. High robot…

Social robots, also known as service or assistant robots, have been developed to improve the quality of human life in recent years. The design of socially capable and intelligent robots can vary, depending on the target user groups. In this…

While assistive robots have much potential to help older people with frailty-related needs, there are few in use. There is a gap between what is developed in laboratories and what would be viable in real-world contexts. Through a series of…

Social robots, also known as service or assistant robots, have been developed to improve the quality of human life in recent years. Socially assistive robots (SAR) are a special type of social robots that focus on providing support through…

In societies increasingly entangled with algorithms, our choices are constantly influenced and shaped by automated systems. This convergence highlights significant concerns for individual autonomy in the age of data-driven AI. It leads to…

Autonomous surgery involves having surgical tasks performed by a robot operating under its own will, with partial or no human involvement. There are several important advantages of automation in surgery, which include increasing precision…

Assistive technologies and in particular assistive robotic arms have the potential to enable people with motor impairments to live a self-determined life. More and more of these systems have become available for end users in recent years,…

Assistive robots enable people with disabilities to conduct everyday tasks on their own. However, these tasks can be complex, containing both coarse reaching motions and fine-grained manipulation. For example, when eating, not only does one…

Socially assistive robotics (SAR) research has shown great potential for supplementing and augmenting therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, the vast majority of SAR research has been limited to short-term…

Assistive robotic devices can increase the independence of individuals with motor impairments. However, each person is unique in their level of injury, preferences, and skills, which moreover can change over time. Further, the amount of…

We present an ongoing project that aims to develop a social robot to help children cope with painful and distressing medical procedures in a clinical setting. Our approach uses automated planning as a core component for action selection in…

Wheelchair-mounted robotic arms (and other assistive robots) should help their users perform everyday tasks. One way robots can provide this assistance is shared autonomy. Within shared autonomy, both the human and robot maintain control…

We consider the design space available for social robots in terms of a hierarchy of functional definitions: the essential properties in terms of a locus of interaction, autonomy, intelligence, awareness of humans as possessors of mental…

Building effective, enjoyable, and safe autonomous vehicles is a lot harder than has historically been considered. The reason is that, simply put, an autonomous vehicle must interact with human beings. This interaction is not a robotics…

Social robots need intelligence in order to safely coexist and interact with humans. Robots without functional abilities in understanding others and unable to empathise might be a societal risk and they may lead to a society of socially…

Developing robots that can assist humans efficiently, safely, and adaptively is crucial for real-world applications such as healthcare. While previous work often assumes a centralized system for co-optimizing human-robot interactions, we…