Related papers: Into the Wild: When Robots Are Not Welcome
Unprecedented possibilities of quadruped robots have driven much research on the technical aspects of these robots. However, the social perception and acceptability of quadruped robots so far remain poorly understood. This work investigates…
Disclosing sensitive health conditions offers significant benefits at both individual and societal levels. However, patients often face challenges due to concerns about stigma. The use of social robots and chatbots to support sensitive…
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…
Trust in human-robot interactions (HRI) is measured in two main ways: through subjective questionnaires and through behavioral tasks. To optimize measurements of trust through questionnaires, the field of HRI faces two challenges: the…
This paper describes our recent effort to use virtual reality to simulate threatening emergency evacuation scenarios in which a robot guides a person to an exit. Our prior work has demonstrated that people will follow a robot's guidance,…
The Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) community often highlights the social context of an interaction as a key consideration when designing, implementing, and evaluating robot behavior. Unfortunately, researchers use the term "social context"…
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…
Trust remains a critical barrier to the effective integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into human-centric domains. Disembodied agents, such as voice assistants, often fail to establish trust due to their inability to convey…
The rise of connectivity, digitalization, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing our society and shaping its future development. During this technological and societal revolution, security has been persistently…
Nowadays, robots are expected to interact more physically, cognitively, and socially with people. They should adapt to unpredictable contexts alongside individuals with various behaviours. For this reason, personalisation is a valuable…
The reuse of technologies and inherent complexity of most robotic systems is increasingly leading to robots with wide attack surfaces and a variety of potential vulnerabilities. Given their growing presence in public environments, security…
Societal or population-level attitudes are aggregated patterns of different individual attitudes, representing collective general predispositions. As service robots become ubiquitous, understanding attitudes towards them at the population…
Two cooperating, autonomous mobile robots with arbitrary nonzero max speeds are placed at arbitrary initial positions in the plane. A remotely detonated bomb is discovered at some source location and must be moved to a safe distance away…
Robotic systems are multi-dimensional entities, combining both hardware and software, that are heavily dependent on, and influenced by, interactions with the real world. They can be variously categorised as embedded, cyberphysical,…
Sustainability is no longer a matter of choice but is invariably linked to the survival of the entire ecosystem of our planet Earth. As robotics technology is growing at an exponential rate, it is crucial to examine its implications for…
We set out to study whether task-based narratives could influence long-term engagement with a service robot. To do so, we deployed a Robo-Barista for five weeks in an over-50's housing complex in Stockton, England. Residents received a free…
Empowering robots to navigate in a socially compliant manner is essential for the acceptance of robots moving in human-inhabited environments. Previously, roboticists have developed geometric navigation systems with decades of empirical…
In-car Voice Assistants (VAs) play an increasingly critical role in automotive user interface design. However, existing VAs primarily perform simple 'query-answer' tasks, limiting their ability to sustain drivers' long-term attention. In…
Robot dogs are receiving increasing attention in various fields of research. However, the number of studies investigating their potential usability on construction sites is scarce. The construction industry implies several human…
Integrating robots into teams of humans is anticipated to bring significant capability improvements for tasks such as searching potentially hazardous buildings. Trust between humans and robots is recognized as a key enabler for human-robot…