Elizabeth Jochum

Using Theatre to Study Interaction with Care Robots

This paper describes an innovative approach for studying interaction between humans and care robots. Using live theatrical performance, we developed a play that depicts a plausible, future care scenario between a human and a socially assistive robot. We used an expanded version of the Godspeed Questionnaire to measure the audiences’ reactions to the robot, the observed interactions between the human and the robot, and their overall reactions to the performance. We present our results and propose a methodology and guidelines for using applied theatre as a platform to study human robot interaction (HRI). Unlike other HRI studies, the subject of our research is not the user who interacts with the robot but rather the audiences observing the HRI. We consider the technical and artistic challenges of designing and staging a believable care scenario that could potentially influence the perception and acceptance of care robots. This study marks a first step towards designing a robust framework for combining applied theatre with HRI research.

Head Orientation Behavior of Users and Durations in Playful Open-Ended Interactions with an Android Robot

This paper presents the results of a field-experiment focused on the head orientation behavior of users in short-term dyadic interactions with an android (male) robot in a playful context, as well as on the duration of the interactions. The robotic trials took place in an art exhibition where participants approached the robot either in groups, or alone, and were let free to either engage, or not in conversation. Our initial hypothesis that participants in groups would show increased rates of head turning behavior-since the turn-taking activity would include more participants-in contrast to those who came alone was not confirmed. Analysis of the results indicated that, on the one hand, gender did not play any significant role in head orientation, a behavior connected tightly to attention direction, and on the other hand, female participants have spent significantly more time with the robot than male participants. The findings suggest that androids have the ability to maintain the focus of attention during short-term interactions within a playful context, and that robots can be sufficiently studied in art settings. This study provides an insight on how users communicate with an android robot, and on how to design meaningful human robot social interaction for real life situations.

Robotic Puppets and the Engineering of Autonomous Theater

This chapter outlines the design of software for embedded control of robotic marionettes using choreography. In traditional marionette puppetry, the puppets often possess dynamics that are quite different from the creatures they imitate. Puppeteers must therefore understand and leverage the inherent dynamics of the puppets to create believable and expressive characters. Because marionettes are actuated by strings, the mechanical description of the marionettes either creates a multiscale or degenerate system—making simulation of the constrained dynamics challenging. Moreover, marionettes have 40–50 degrees of freedom with closed kinematic chains. Generating puppet choreography that is mimetic (that is, recognizably human) results in a high-dimensional nonlinear optimal control problem that must be solved for each motion. In performance, these motion primitives must be combined in a way that preserves stability, resulting in an optimal timing control problem. Our software accounts for the efficient computation of the (1) discrete time dynamics that preserve the constraints and other integrals of motion, (2) nonlinear optimal control policies (including optimal control of LTV systems), and (3) optimal timing of choreography, all within a single framework. We discuss our current results and the potential application of our findings across disciplines, including the development of entertainment robots and autonomous theater.

Cultivating the Uncanny: The Telegarden and Other Oddities

The concept of the Uncanny has attracted the attention of art critics and scholars for over a century. Freud’s 1919 essay The Uncanny considers objects and other phenomena that evoke a powerful psychological response of fear and fascination. Freud links the human experience of the Uncanny—essentially an awareness of awareness—to repressed fears and desires. The Uncanny Valley—a related but distinct concept—was proposed by Masahiro Mori in 1970 concerning the design of robots and prosthetics. This chapter explores the Freudian and Morian concepts of the Uncanny and their influence on artists working with robots. We identify two categories: the representational uncanny is triggered by objects that look lifelike, and the experiential uncanny is triggered by non-anthropomorphic phenomena that behave in ways that signal awareness. We focus on the latter in our examination of three artworks—The Telegarden (1995), Six Robots Named Paul (2012), and The Blind Robot (2013)—which create a heightened atmosphere of awareness and challenge assumptions about authenticity and agency.

Workshop on Enabling Rich, Expressive Robot Animation

HRI researchers and practitioners often need to generate complex, rich, expressive movement from machines to facilitate effective interaction. Techniques often include live puppeteering via Wizard-of-Oz setups, sympathetic interfaces, or custom control software. Often, animation is accomplished by playing back pre-rendered movement sequences generated by offline animators, puppeteers, or actors providing input to motion capture systems. Roboticists have also explored real-time parametric animation, affected motion planning, mechanical motion design, or blends of offline and live methods. Generating robot animation is not always straightforward and can be time consuming, costly, or even counter-productive when human-robot interaction breaks down due to inadequate animation. This workshop addresses a need to compare the various approaches to animating robots, to identify when particular techniques are most appropriate, and explore opportunities for further experimentation and tool-building.

An Experimental Study of Embodied Interaction and Human Perception of Social Presence for Interactive Robots in Public Settings

The human perception of robots as social depends on many factors, including those that do not necessarily pertain to a robot’s cognitive functioning. Experience design (ED) offers a useful framework for evaluating when participants interact with robots as products or tools and when they regard them as social actors. This paper describes a between-participants experiment conducted at a science museum, where visitors were invited to play a game of noughts and crosses with a Baxter robot. The goal is to foster meaningful interactions that promote engagement between the human and the robot in a museum context. Using an ED framework, we tested the robot in three different conditions to better understand which factors contribute to the perception of robots as social. The experiment also outlines best practices for conducting human–robot interaction research in museum exhibitions. Results from the study indicate that perceived social presence can be evaluated using a combination of human robot interaction and ED methods that measure co-presence and co-experience.