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Robots must know how to be gentle when they need to interact with fragile objects, or when the robot itself is prone to wear and tear. We propose an approach that enables deep reinforcement learning to train policies that are gentle, both…
When people try to influence others to do something, they subconsciously adjust their speech to include appropriate emotional information. In order for a robot to influence people in the same way, the robot should be able to imitate the…
Soft robotic fingers can improve adaptability in grasping and manipulation, compensating for geometric variation in object or environmental contact, but today lack force capacity and fine dexterity. Integrated tactile sensors can provide…
Social robots hold promise for reducing job interview anxiety, yet designing agents that provide both psychological safety and instructional guidance remains challenging. Through a three-phase iterative design study (N = 8), we empirically…
Text-writing robots have been used in assistive writing and drawing applications. However, robots do not convey emotional tones in the writing process due to the lack of behaviors humans typically adopt. To examine how people interpret…
In this paper we present an integrated robotic system capable of participating in and performing a wide range of educational and entertainment tasks, in collaboration with one or more children. The system, called ChildBot, features…
Human emotions are complex and can be conveyed through nuanced touch gestures. Previous research has primarily focused on how humans recognize emotions through touch or on identifying key features of emotional expression for robots.…
As child-robot interactions become more and more common in daily life environment, it is important to examine how robot's errors influence children's behavior. We explored how a robot's unexpected behaviors affect child-robot interactions…
The foundation of this paper is an experiment of fifteen participants interacting directly with an autonomous robot. The task for the participants was to carry a table, in two different setups, together with a robot, which is intended to…
This project aims to motivate research in competitive human-robot interaction by creating a robot competitor that can challenge human users in certain scenarios such as physical exercise and games. With this goal in mind, we introduce the…
The primary aim of this paper is to investigate the integration of emotions into the social navigation framework to analyse its effect on both navigation and human physiological safety and comfort. The proposed framework uses leg detection…
College students with ADHD respond positively to simple socially assistive robots (SARs) that monitor attention and provide non-verbal feedback, but studies have been done only in brief in-lab sessions. We present an initial design and…
Touch is a key part of interaction and communication between humans, but has still been little explored in human-robot interaction. In this work, participants were asked to approach and touch a humanoid robot on the hand (Nao - 26…
This paper presents a qualitative analysis of participants' perceptions of a robotic coach conducting Positive Psychology exercises, providing insights for the future design of robotic coaches. Participants (n = 20) took part in a…
How are robots becoming smarter at interacting with their surroundings? Recent advances have reshaped how robots use tactile sensing to perceive and engage with the world. Tactile sensing is a game-changer, allowing robots to embed…
A robot needs contextual awareness, effective speech production and complementing non-verbal gestures for successful communication in society. In this paper, we present our end-to-end system that tries to enhance the effectiveness of…
There is a growing need to deliver rehabilitation care to patients remotely. Long term demographic changes, geographic shortages of care providers, and now a global pandemic contribute to this need. Telepresence provides an option for…
In today's high-pressure and isolated society, the demand for emotional support has surged, necessitating innovative solutions. Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) offer a technological approach to providing emotional assistance by leveraging…
High-resolution tactile sensing can provide accurate information about local contact in contact-rich robotic tasks. However, the deployment of such tasks in unstructured environments remains under-investigated. To improve the robustness of…
This paper introduces the project Social Assistive Robotics for Autistic Children aimed at using robotic therapy for autism. The goal of the project is testing autistic children's interactions with the social robot NAO. In particular the…