Related papers: Robots that Evolve with Us: Modular Co-Design for …
Recent advances in 3D printing and manufacturing of miniaturized robotic hardware and computing are paving the way to build inexpensive and disposable robots. This will have a large impact on several applications including scientific…
Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
Social robots are becoming increasingly diverse in their design, behavior, and usage. In this chapter, we provide a broad-ranging overview of the main characteristics that arise when one considers social robots and their interactions with…
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…
Robustness, the ability of a system to maintain performance under significant and unanticipated environmental changes, is a critical property for robotic systems. While biological systems naturally exhibit robustness, there is no…
Foundation models are increasingly embedded in social robots, mediating not only what they say and do but also how they adapt to users over time. This shift renders traditional ``one-size-fits-all'' explanation strategies especially…
Robotic performance emerges from the coupling of body and controller, yet it remains unclear when morphology-control co-design is necessary. We present a unified framework that embeds morphology and control parameters within a single neural…
Designing robots capable of generating interpretable behavior is a prerequisite for achieving effective human-robot collaboration. This means that the robots need to be capable of generating behavior that aligns with human expectations and,…
Modularity in robotics holds great potential. In principle, modular robots can be disassembled and reassembled in different robots, and possibly perform new tasks. Nevertheless, actually exploiting modularity is yet an unsolved problem:…
Evolutionary Robotics offers the possibility to design robots to solve a specific task automatically by optimizing their morphology and control together. However, this co-optimization of body and control is challenging, because controllers…
The design (shape) of a robot is usually decided before the control is implemented. This might limit how well the design is adapted to a task, as the suitability of the design is given by how well the robot performs in the task, which…
The sense of family connectedness may support positive outcomes including individual well-being, resilience, and healthy family functioning. However, as technologies advance, they often replace human-human interactions instead of nurturing…
In the field of Geriatronics, enabling effective and transparent communication between humans and robots is crucial for enhancing the acceptance and performance of assistive robots. Our early-stage research project investigates the…
This review is the first step in a long-term research project exploring how social robotics and AI-generated content can contribute to the creative experiences of older adults, with a focus on collaborative drawing and painting. We…
Recent advances in large-scale machine learning have produced high-capacity foundation models capable of adapting to a broad array of downstream tasks. While such models hold great promise for robotics, the prevailing paradigm still…
Software architectures for conversational robots typically consist of multiple modules, each designed for a particular processing task or functionality. Some of these modules are developed for the purpose of making decisions about the next…
Sidewalk robots are increasingly common across the globe. Yet, their operation on public paths poses challenges for people with mobility disabilities (PwMD) who face barriers to accessibility, such as insufficient curb cuts. We interviewed…
This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…
A limitation for collaborative robots (cobots) is their lack of ability to adapt to human partners, who typically exhibit an immense diversity of behaviors. We present an autonomous framework as a cobot's real-time decision-making mechanism…
The demand for social robots in fields like healthcare, education, and entertainment increases due to their emotional adaptation features. These robots leverage multimodal communication, incorporating speech, facial expressions, and…