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Tactile interaction plays an essential role in human-to-human interaction. People gain comfort and support from tactile interactions with others and touch is an important predictor for trust. While touch has been explored as a communicative…
The Robadom project aims at creating a homecare robot that help and assist people in their daily life, either in doing task for the human or in managing day organization. A robot could have this kind of role only if it is accepted by…
Some robots can interact with humans using natural language, and identify service requests through human-robot dialog. However, few robots are able to improve their language capabilities from this experience. In this paper, we develop a…
In this paper, we investigate the roles that social robots can take in physical exercise with human partners. In related work, robots or virtual intelligent agents take the role of a coach or instructor whereas in other approaches they are…
This article explores the evaluation method for the language communication proficiency of AI-driven robots engaging in interactive communication with children. The utilization of AI-driven robots in children's everyday communication is…
From dating to job interviews, making new friends or simply chatting with the cashier at checkout, engaging in small talk is a vital, everyday social skill. For adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), small talk can be particularly…
Socially Assistive Robots are studied in different Child-Robot Interaction settings. However, logistical constraints limit accessibility, particularly affecting timely support for mental wellbeing. In this work, we have investigated whether…
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…
AI conversational agents have demonstrated efficacy in social contact interventions for stigma reduction at a low cost. However, the underlying mechanisms of how interaction designs contribute to these effects remain unclear. This study…
With the increasing prevalence and diversity of robots interacting in the real world, there is need for flexible, on-the-fly planning and cooperation. Large Language Models are starting to be explored in a multimodal setup for…
Counterspeech offers a non-repressive approach to moderate hate speech in online communities. Research has examined how counterspeech chatbots restrain hate speakers and support targets, but their impact on bystanders remains unclear.…
Social bots are currently regarded an influential but also somewhat mysterious factor in public discourse and opinion making. They are considered to be capable of massively distributing propaganda in social and online media and their…
This study evaluates the integration of AI-powered robots in early childhood education, focusing on their impact on emotional self-regulation, engagement, and collaborative skills. A ten-week experimental design involving two groups of…
Can social power endow social robots with the capacity to persuade? This paper represents our recent endeavor to design persuasive social robots. We have designed and run three different user studies to investigate the effectiveness of…
When people use electronic media for their communication, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) theories describe the social and communicative aspects of people's interpersonal transactions. When people interact via a remote-controlled…
A wide range of participation is essential for democracy, as it helps prevent the dominance of extreme views, erosion of legitimacy, and political polarization. However, engagement in online political discussions often features a limited…
Recent research has demonstrated the potential of reinforcement learning (RL) in enabling effective multi-robot collaboration, particularly in social dilemmas where robots face a trade-off between self-interests and collective benefits.…
Robots capable of participating in complex social interactions have shown great potential in a variety of applications. As these robots grow more popular, it is essential to continuously evaluate the dynamics of the human-robot…
We consider multi-robot applications, where a team of robots can ask for the intervention of a human operator to handle difficult situations. As the number of requests grows, team members will have to wait for the operator attention, hence…
This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among human interactors--the…