Luise Süssenbach

“The first five seconds”: Contingent stepwise entry into an interaction as a means to secure sustained engagement in HRI

If robot systems are being deployed in real world settings with untrained users who happen to accidentally pass by or could leave at any moment in time, then this places specific demands on the robot system: it needs to secure and maintain the users engagement. In this, a common and critical problem consists of entering into a ‘focused encounter’. It requires each interactional partner to closely react upon the others actions on a very fine-grained level engaging in a stepwise and dynamic process of mutual adjustments. We report initial findings from a study in which we have developed a preliminary, simple solution to this problem inspired by work from Conversation Analysis [7]. Using this as an instrument to explore the impact of a ‘contingent’ (CE) vs. ‘non-contingent entry’ (NCE), we find that users who enter into the interaction in a dynamic and contingent manner show a significantly different way of interacting with the robot than the NCE group.

A robot as fitness companion: Towards an interactive action-based motivation model

The topic of motivation is a crucial issue for various human-robot interaction (HRI) scenarios. Interactional aspects of motivation can be studied in human-human interaction (HHI) and build the basis for modeling a robots interactional conduct. Using an ethnographic approach we explored the factors relevant in the formation of motivation-relevant processes in an indoor-cycling activity. We propose an interactive, action-based motivation model for HRI that has been implemented in an autonomous robot system and tested during a long-term HRI study. The model is based on micro-analyses of human indoor cycling courses and resulted in an adaption of specific dialog patterns for HRI. A qualitative evaluation - accompanied by a quantitative analysis - demonstrated that the transfer of interaction patterns from HHI to HRI was successful with participants benefitting from the interaction experience (e.g., performance, subjective feeling of being motivated).

Long-Term Feedback Mechanisms for Robotic Assisted Indoor Cycling Training

We present a concept for long-term feedback during robot assisted indoor cycling training. Our feedback model captures different aspects from sport motivation theory. Furthermore, we present our designed measurements to evaluate the robots persuasiveness and users compliance. We conducted an intensive 18-day isolation study in two campaigns (e.g. socially assistive robot vs. display instructed, n=16) in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center. The results show that users tend to comply to the robots instructions and that there is a significant difference in compliance between the two conditions.