Anja Simone Richert

Human-in-the-Loop Processes as Enabler for Data Analytics in Digitalized Organizations

As a key driver for innovation in science, economy and society, digitalization affects almost every aspect of our daily working and living environments. The opportunity to track data about processes, persons, and other entities in organizations allows new opportunities for digitalized working scenarios and the creation of new perspectives on matters such as interand intra-organizational relationships. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on these perspectives on the basis of studies that are currently a part of our research activities. Firstly, a framework is outlined that combines topic modeling of textual data and machine learning to derive thematic synergies in the data, for example, between organizations or research projects. Secondly, classical benchmarking approaches are extended by developing a suitable text-mining process for interdisciplinary research. Lastly, a brief concept about evolution as a method for further optimizations and its implications for the human-in-the-loop process is outlined. Altogether, the approaches contribute to a comprehensive human-in-the-loop model – defined as a model that combines intelligent data technologies with human interaction – in the culture of innovation amongst modern, highly digitalized organizations.

The Big-Five Personality Dimensions and Attitudes to-wards Robots: A Cross Sectional Study

Within the next years, human-robot-interaction will be ready to capture relevant parts of the society such as work, care, and health. The technologies are there, the area of artificial intelligence is developing fast and promising and the first demonstrators are already successfully implemented in industry and other domains. The big questions are: Are we willing to have human-robot-companionships? What influences our openness and desire for social relationships with robots? This paper - apart from classical pathways of acceptance research - seeks to find some answers in the aspects of personality and attitudes. The results are based upon an empirical study with 230 participants and give some insights on the correlations of the Big-Five and human-robot-interaction.

Designing Hands-On Robotics Courses for Students with Visual Impairment or Blindness

School laboratories let students playfully experience the fundamentals of, for example, robotics, computer science, and technology-related topics. By working with LEGO Mindstorms, secondary school students get a chance to learn on a cognitive, emotional, and haptic level and gain experiences with the aid of even more advanced robotics. However, due to an impairment or lack of sight, it is hardly possible for some students to fully participate in a programming process or in building a robot. To overcome this unintentional discrimination, the interdisciplinary student laboratory “RoboScope” at RWTH Aachen University has teamed up with a group of experts to develop a barrierfree robotic course. Since then, the course has been tested and implemented based on concurrent evaluations and frequently held at RWTH and several other German schools. The presented work covers an overview of different kinds of visual impairment and lab settings and the development cycle of the courses at RWTH from design to testing, implementation, and further development regarding the evaluations. Evaluations show that students who are visually impaired or blind appreciate the opportunity to participate in the field of robotics. An insight into the evaluation concept that differs from “regular” courses in the “Roboscope,” as well as the results are used for further development.