Related papers: Teaching Robots to Interpret Social Interactions t…
Group processes refer to the dynamics that occur within a group and are critical for understanding how groups function. With robots being increasingly placed within small groups, improving these processes has emerged as an important…
The past few decades has seen increased interest in the application of social robots to interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder as behavioural coaches [4]. We consider that robots embedded in therapies could also provide quantitative…
Learning predictive models from interaction with the world allows an agent, such as a robot, to learn about how the world works, and then use this learned model to plan coordinated sequences of actions to bring about desired outcomes.…
In this study, we investigate how a robot can generate novel and creative actions from its own experience of learning basic actions. Inspired by a machine learning approach to computational creativity, we propose a dynamic neural network…
We propose augmenting the empathetic capacities of social robots by integrating non-verbal cues. Our primary contribution is the design and labeling of four types of empathetic non-verbal cues, abbreviated as SAFE: Speech, Action (gesture),…
Service and assistive robots are increasingly being deployed in dynamic social environments; however, ensuring transparent and explainable interactions remains a significant challenge. This paper presents a multimodal explainability module…
In this paper, we propose a concept learning architecture that enables a robot to build symbols through self-exploration by interacting with a varying number of objects. Our aim is to allow a robot to learn concepts without constraints,…
One significant simplification in most previous work on robot learning is the closed-world assumption where the robot is assumed to know ahead of time a complete set of predicates describing the state of the physical world. However, robots…
Bridging the gap between natural language commands and autonomous execution in unstructured environments remains an open challenge for robotics. This requires robots to perceive and reason over the current task scene through multiple…
To bring robots into human everyday life, their capacity for social interaction must increase. One way for robots to acquire social skills is by assigning them the concept of identity. This research focuses on the concept of…
Robots which interact with the physical world will benefit from a fine-grained tactile understanding of objects and surfaces. Additionally, for certain tasks, robots may need to know the haptic properties of an object before touching it. To…
Integrating social robots in our group-based society, beyond the technical challenges, requires considering the social group dynamics. Following the results from preliminary exploratory studies on the influence of social robots on group…
The objective of this work is to expand upon previous works, considering socially acceptable behaviours within robot navigation and interaction, and allow a robot to closely approach static and dynamic individuals or groups. The space…
Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as the dominant paradigm for robotic task planning using natural language instructions. However, trained on general internet data, LLMs are not inherently aligned with the embodiment, skill sets,…
Social alignment in AI systems aims to ensure that these models behave according to established societal values. However, unlike humans, who derive consensus on value judgments through social interaction, current language models (LMs) are…
Robots operating in everyday environments must often decide when and whether to engage with people, yet such decisions often hinge on subtle nonverbal cues that unfold over time and are difficult to model explicitly. Drawing on a five-day…
For a natural social human-robot interaction, it is essential for a robot to learn the human-like social skills. However, learning such skills is notoriously hard due to the limited availability of direct instructions from people to teach a…
Beyond mere formality, small talk plays a pivotal role in social dynamics, serving as a verbal handshake for building rapport and understanding. For conversational AI and social robots, the ability to engage in small talk enhances their…
This paper presents a computational model of the processing of dynamic spatial relations occurring in an embodied robotic interaction setup. A complete system is introduced that allows autonomous robots to produce and interpret dynamic…
Safe and efficient co-planning of multiple robots in pedestrian participation environments is promising for applications. In this work, a novel multi-robot social-aware efficient cooperative planner that on the basis of off-policy…