Jan Kolkmeier

Dynamics of social positioning patterns in group-robot interactions

When a mobile robot interacts with a group of people, it has to consider its position and orientation. We introduce a novel study aimed at generating hypotheses on suitable behavior for such social positioning, explicitly focusing on interaction with small groups of users and allowing for the temporal and social dynamics inherent in most interactions. In particular, the interactions we look at are approach, converse and retreat. In this study, groups of three participants and a telepresence robot (controlled remotely by a fourth participant) solved a task together while we collected quantitative and qualitative data, including tracking of positioning/orientation and ratings of the behaviors used. In the data we observed a variety of patterns that can be extrapolated to hypotheses using inductive reasoning. One such pattern/hypothesis is that a (telepresence) robot could pass through a group when retreating, without this affecting how comfortable that retreat is for the group members. Another is that a group will rate the position/orientation of a (telepresence) robot as more comfortable when it is aimed more at the center of that group.

With Us or Against Us: Simulated Social Touch by Virtual Agents in a Cooperative or Competitive Setting

In this paper we examine how simulated social touch by a virtual agent in a cooperative or competitive augmented reality game influences the perceived trustworthiness, warmth and politeness of the agent. Before and after the game, participants interact with two agents whereby one agent touches the participant’s arm. Results showed no significant difference in how agents are perceived in the cooperative and competitive situation. However, significant differences between perception of the touching and non-touching agents could be observed for warmth.

Touching Virtual Agents: Embodiment and Mind

In this paper we outline the design and development of an embodied conversational agent setup that incorporates an augmented reality screen and tactile sleeve. With this setup the agent can visually and physically touch the user. We provide a literature overview of embodied conversational agents, as well as haptic technologies, and argue for the importance of adding touch to an embodied conversational agent. Finally, we provide guidelines for studies involving the touching virtual agent (TVA) setup.

Moral Conflicts in VR: Addressing Grade Disputes with a Virtual Trainer

A Virtual Trainer (VT) for moral expertise development can potentially contribute to organizational and personal moral well-being. In a pilot study a prototype of the VT confronted university employees with a complaint from an anonymous student on unfair grading: a plausible scenario. Addressing criticisms from students may be a stressful situation for many teaching professionals. For successful training, adapting the agent’s strategy based on the performance of the user is crucial. To this end, we further recorded a multimodal dataset of the interactions between the participants and the VT for future analysis. Participants saw the value in a VT that lets them practice such encounters. What is more, many participants felt truly taken aback when our VT announced that a student was unhappy with them. We further describe a first look at the multimodal dataset.

A demonstration of the ASAP Realizer-Unity3D bridge for virtual and mixed reality applications

Modern game engines such as Unity make prototyping and developing experiences in virtual and mixed reality environments increasingly accessible and efficient, and their value has long been recognized by the scientific community as well. However, these game engines do not easily allow control of virtual embodied characters, situated in such environments, with the same expressiveness, flexibility, and generalizability, as offered by modern BML realizers that generate synchronized multimodal behavior from Behavior Markup Language (BML). We demonstrate our integration of the ASAP BML Realizer and the Unity3D game engine at the hand of an Augmented Reality setup. We further show an in-unity editor for BML animations in the same system.

Snoozle -- A Robotic Pillow That Helps You Go to Sleep: HRI 2017 Student Design Competition

Not getting enough sleep is detrimental to our health and productivity, yet we have difficulty to maintain consistent bedtimes. Technological solutions to this problem mostly focus on detecting sleep patterns and providing feedback on them. We felt there was an opportunity for a perspective that concentrates on ones subjective experience. We propose Snoozle, an actuated pillow that supports consistent bedtimes by inviting users to bed, and improves the sleeping experience by enhancing the feeling of co-presence. In this proposal, we present how the concept of Snoozle developed from structured brainstorms, storyboards and sketches. We discuss the actuated pillow behavior and the envisioned interaction, and we detail our next steps.

project SENSE – Multimodal Simulation with Full-Body Real-Time Verbal and Nonverbal Interactions

This paper presents a multimodal simulation system, project-SENSE, that combines virtual reality and full-body motion capture technologies with real-time verbal and nonverbal communication. We introduce the technical setup and employed hardware and software of a first prototype. We discuss the capabilities of the system for the investigation of cooperation paradoxes and the effects of direct nonverbal mimicry. We argue that this prototype lays the technological basis for further research in interpersonal and social skills, as well as the social and emotional consequences of nonverbal mimicry in sustained interactions.

Single value devices

We live in a world of continuous information overflow, but the quality of information and communication is suffering. Single value devices contribute to the information and communication quality by focussing on one explicit, relevant piece of information. The information is decoupled from a computer and represented in an object, integrating into daily life. The contribution of this paper is on different levels: first, we identify the class of single value devices, and, second, illustrate it by examples in a survey. Third, we collect the characterisations of single value devices in a taxonomy. The taxonomy provides also a collection of design choices allowing to find new combinations or alternatives more easily, and facilitating the design of new, meaningful, effective and working objects. Finally, when we want to step from experimental and conceptual examples to commercialisable products a number of issues become relevant that are identified and discussed in this paper.