Frank Hegel

The bielefeld anthropomorphic robot head “Flobi”

A robots head is important both for directional sensors and, in human-directed robotics, as the single most visible interaction interface. However, designing a robots head faces contradicting requirements when integrating powerful sensing with social expression. Furher, reactions of the general public show that current head designs often cause negative user reactions and distract from the functional capabilities.

Understanding Social Robots

Research on social robots is mainly comprised of research into algorithmic problems in order to expand a robot´s capabilities to improve communication with human beings. Also, a large body of research concentrates on the appearance, i.e. aesthetic form of social robots. However, only little reference to their definition is made. In this paper we argue that form, function, and context have to be taken systematically into account in order to develop a model to help us understand social robots. Therefore, we address the questions: What is a social robot, what are the interdisciplinary research aspects of social robotics, and how are these different aspects interlinked? In order to present a comprehensive and concise overview of the various aspects we present a framework for a definition towards social robots.

'If you sound like me, you must be more human': on the interplay of robot and user features on human-robot acceptance and anthropomorphism

In an experiment we manipulated a robots voice in two ways: First, we varied robot gender; second, we equipped the robot with a human-like or a robot-like synthesized voice. Moreover, we took into account user gender and tested effects of these factors on human-robot acceptance, psychological closeness and psychological anthropomorphism. When participants formed an impression of a same-gender robot, the robot was perceived more positively. Participants also felt more psychological closeness to the same-gender robot. Similarly, the same-gender robot was anthropomorphized more strongly, but only when it utilized a human-like voice. Results indicate that a projection mechanism could underlie these effects.

Social facilitation with social robots

Regarding the future usage of social robots in workplace scenarios, we addressed the question of potential mere robotic presence effects on human performance. Applying the experimental social facilitation paradigm in social robotics, we compared task performance of 106 participants on easy and complex cognitive and motoric tasks across three presence groups (alone vs. human present vs. robot present). Results revealed significant evidence for the predicted social facilitation effects for both human and robotic presence compared to an alone condition. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to the consideration of the interaction of robotic presence and task difficulty in modeling robotic assistance systems.

Understanding social robots: A user study on anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is one of the keys to understand the expectations people have about social robots. In this paper we address the question of how a robotpsilas actions are perceived and represented in a human subject interacting with the robot and how this perception is influenced only by the appearance of the robot. We present results of an interaction-study in which participants had to play a version of the classical Prisonerspsila Dilemma Game (PDG) against four opponents: a human partner (HP), an anthropomorphic robot (AR), a functional robot (FR), and a computer (CP). As the responses of each game partner were randomized unknowingly to the participants, the attribution of intention or will to an opponent (i.e. HP, AR, FR or CP) was based purely on differences in the perception of shape and embodiment. We hypothesize that the degree of human-likeness of the game partner will modulate what the people attribute to the opponents - the more human like the robot looks the more people attribute human-like qualities to the robot.

The social robot ‘Flobi’: Key concepts of industrial design

This paper introduces the industrial design of the social robot ‘Flobi’. In total, three key concepts influenced the industrial design: First, the robot head of Flobi appears as a cartoon-like character and has a ‘hole-free’ design without any visible conjunctions. Second, Flobi has dynamic features to display not only primary emotions, but also shame, a typical secondary emotion. Third, the structural design implements exchangeable modular parts. Through modular design, the underlying hardware is quickly accessible and the visual features of the robot (e.g., hairstyle, facial features) can be altered easily. A first study demonstrated the successful implementation of Flobis dynamic features, whereas a second study demonstrates that the exchangeable hair modules influence gender-schematic perceptions of the robot.

Activating elicited agent knowledge: How robot and user features shape the perception of social robots

A recent theoretical framework on anthropomorphism emphasizes the role of elicited agent knowledge in anthropomorphic inferences about nonhuman entities. According to the Three-Factor Model of psychological Anthropomorphism, people use anthropocentric knowledge structures when judging unfamiliar objects (e.g., robots). In the present research, our goal was to manipulate the accessibility of such elicited agent knowledge by varying features of a robots voice: Specifically, we examined effects of vocal cues that reflected both gender of robot (i.e., a male vs. female voice) and voice type (i.e., a human-like vs. robot-like voice). This was done to test the impact of these vocal features on anthropomorphic inferences about the robot and on human-robot interaction (HRI) acceptance. Our results demonstrate that a robots vocal cues clearly influence subsequent judgments of the robot and particularly so, when participant gender taken into account. Implications of our research for robotics will be discussed.

Classes of Applications for Social Robots: A User Study

The paper introduces an online user study on applications for social robots with 127 participants. The potential users proposed 570 application scenarios based on the appearance and functionality of four robots presented (AIBO, BARTHOC, BIRON, iCat). The items were grouped into 13 categories which are interpreted and discussed by means of four dimensions: public vs. private use, intensity of interaction, complexity of interaction model, and functional vs. human-like appearance. The interpretation lead to three classes of applications for social robots according to the degree of social interaction: (1) Specialized Applications where the robot has to perform clearly defined tasks which are delegated by a user, (2) Public Applications which are directed to the communication with many users, and (3) Individual Applications with the need of a highly elaborated social model to maintain a variety of situations with few people.

Towards a typology of meaningful signals and cues in social robotics

In this paper, we present a first step towards a typology of relevant signals and cues in human-robot interaction (HRI). In human as well as in animal communication systems, signals and cues play an important role for senders and receivers of such signs. In our typology, we systematically distinguish between a robots signals and cues which are either designed to be human-like or artificial to create meaningful information. Subsequently, developers and designers should be aware of which signs affect a users judgements on social robots. For this reason, we first review several signals and cues that have already been successfully used in HRI with regard to our typology. Second, we discuss crucial human-like and artificial cues which have so far not been considered in the design of social robots - although they are highly likely to affect a users judgement of social robots.

Direct imitation of human facial expressions by a user-interface robot

Imitating the facial expressions of another person is a meaningful signal within interpersonal communication. Providing a robot with the capability of imitating the face of an interactant marks a first step towards implementing a communication model of mimicry. In this paper, we present a novel approach to facial expression imitation which does not require observed expressions to be assigned to a set of basic emotional expressions. Rather, arbitrary expressions are directly imitated exclusively based on camera images of the interactants face. Consequently, the repertoire of displayable expressions is extended significantly and becomes more appropriate for interactions with humans.