Related papers: TV-watching partner robot: Analysis of User's Expe…
Explanations constitute an important aspect of successful human robot interactions and can enhance robot understanding. To improve the understanding of the robot, we have developed four levels of explanation (LOE) based on two questions:…
Japan faces many challenges related to its aging society, including increasing rates of cognitive decline in the population and a shortage of caregivers. Efforts have begun to explore solutions using artificial intelligence (AI), especially…
The increasing presence of robots alongside humans, such as in human-robot teams in manufacturing, gives rise to research questions about the kind of behaviors people prefer in their robot counterparts. We term actions that support…
Social robots are starting to become incorporated into daily lives by assisting in the promotion of physical and mental wellbeing. This paper investigates the use of social robots for delivering mindfulness sessions. We created a…
As social service robots become commonplace, it is essential for them to effectively interpret human signals, such as verbal, gesture, and eye gaze, when people need to focus on their primary tasks to minimize interruptions and…
Learning companion robots for young children are increasingly adopted in informal learning environments. Although parents play a pivotal role in their children's learning, very little is known about how parents prefer to incorporate robots…
As robots become increasingly prevalent in human environments, there will inevitably be times when a robot needs to interrupt a human to initiate an interaction. Our work introduces the first interruptibility-aware mobile robot system, and…
We consider a service robot that offers chocolate treats to people passing in its proximity: it has the capability of predicting in advance a person's intention to interact, and to actuate an "offering" gesture, subtly extending the tray of…
Recently the field of Human-Robot Interaction gained popularity, due to the wide range of possibilities of how robots can support humans during daily tasks. One form of supportive robots are socially assistive robots which are specifically…
Virtual and robotic agents capable of perceiving human empathy have the potential to participate in engaging and meaningful human-machine interactions that support human well-being. Prior research in computational empathy has focused on…
People with lower and upper body disabilities can benefit from wheelchairs and robotic arms to improve mobility and independence. Prior assistive interfaces, such as touchscreens and voice-driven predefined commands, often remain…
Human collaborators coordinate effectively their actions through both verbal and non-verbal communication. We believe that the the same should hold for human-robot teams. We propose a formalism that enables a robot to decide optimally…
Intelligent agents such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are now built into streaming TV systems, allowing people to use voice input to navigate the increasingly complex set of apps available on a TV. However, these systems typically…
Due to their unique persuasive power, language-capable robots must be able to both act in line with human moral norms and clearly and appropriately communicate those norms. These requirements are complicated by the possibility that humans…
Bots are software systems designed to support users by automating a specific process, task, or activity. When such systems implement a conversational component to interact with the users, they are also known as conversational agents. Bots,…
Multi-party open-ended conversation remains a major challenge in human-robot interaction, particularly when robots must recognise speakers, allocate turns, and respond coherently under overlapping or rapidly shifting dialogue. This paper…
Ambiguity and noise in natural language instructions create a significant barrier towards adopting autonomous systems into safety critical workflows involving humans and machines. In this paper, we propose to build on recent advances in…
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…
This paper explores the estimation of user attention in the setting of a cooperative handheld robot: a robot designed to behave as a handheld tool but that has levels of task knowledge. We use a tool-mounted gaze tracking system, which,…
TalkWithMachines aims to enhance human-robot interaction by contributing to interpretable industrial robotic systems, especially for safety-critical applications. The presented paper investigates recent advancements in Large Language Models…