Related papers: Do Looks Matter? Exploring Functional and Aestheti…
We study a Visual-Inertial Navigation (VIN) problem in which a robot needs to estimate its state using an on-board camera and an inertial sensor, without any prior knowledge of the external environment. We consider the case in which the…
Personalisation is essential to achieve more acceptable and effective results in human-robot interaction. Placing users in the central role, many studies have focused on enhancing the abilities of social robots to perceive and understand…
Blind and visually impaired (BVI) computer science students face systematic barriers when learning data structures: current accessibility approaches typically translate diagrams into alternative text, focusing on visual appearance rather…
Visual information plays a critical role in human decision-making process. While recent developments on visually-aware recommender systems have taken the product image into account, none of them has considered the aesthetic aspect. We argue…
Companion robots hold immense potential in providing emotional support to older adults in the rapidly aging world. However, questions have been raised regarding whether having a robotic companion benefits healthy older adults, how they…
The last decade has shown a growing interest in robots as well-being coaches. However, insightful guidelines for the design of robots as coaches to promote mental well-being have not yet been proposed. This paper details design and ethical…
Vision plays a crucial role in comprehending the world around us. More than 85% of the external information is obtained through the vision system. It influences our mobility, cognition, information access, and interaction with the…
A key capability required by service robots operating in real-world, dynamic environments is that of Visual Intelligence, i.e., the ability to use their vision system, reasoning components and background knowledge to make sense of their…
Visually impaired individuals face significant challenges navigating and interacting with unknown situations, particularly in tasks requiring spatial awareness and semantic scene understanding. To accelerate the development and evaluate the…
Social robots often rely on visual perception to understand their users and the environment. Recent advancements in data-driven approaches for computer vision have demonstrated great potentials for applying deep-learning models to enhance a…
Robots are becoming more prominent in assisting persons with disabilities (PwD). Whilst there is broad consensus that robots can assist in mitigating physical impairments, the extent to which they can facilitate social inclusion remains…
This paper presents the behaviour control of a service robot for intelligent object search in a domestic environment. A major challenge in service robotics is to enable fetch-and-carry missions that are satisfying for the user in terms of…
As social robots become more common, many have adopted cute aesthetics aiming to enhance user comfort and acceptance. However, the effect of this aesthetic choice on human feedback in reinforcement learning scenarios remains unclear.…
Ecodriving guidance includes courses or suggestions for human drivers to improve driving behaviour, reducing energy use and emissions. This paper presents a systematic review of existing eco-driving guidance studies and identifies…
The aim of the present study involves designing a humanoid robot guide as a walking trainer for elderly and rehabilitation patients. The system is based on the humanoid robot Pepper with a compliance approach that allows to match the motion…
In this paper, we study cost-effective home robot solutions which are designed for home health monitoring. The recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have significantly advanced the capabilities of the robots, enabling them to…
Mobile robot navigation is typically regarded as a geometric problem, in which the robot's objective is to perceive the geometry of the environment in order to plan collision-free paths towards a desired goal. However, a purely geometric…
Visual assistive technologies, such as Microsoft Seeing AI, can improve access to environmental information for persons with blindness or low vision (pBLV). Yet, the physical and functional implications of different device embodiments…
Co-designing a robot's morphology and control can ensure synergistic interactions between them, prevalent in biological organisms. However, co-design is a high-dimensional search problem. To make this search tractable, we need a systematic…
Using social robots and virtual agents (VAs) as interfaces for health monitoring systems for older adults offers the possibility of more engaging interactions that can support long-term health and well-being. While robots are characterized…