Robot Avatar Research Articles

Embodiment of Soft Robots

Embodiment of Soft Robots

Different level of virtualization of sight and touch produces the uncanny valley of avatar\u2019s hand embodiment

Humans increasingly often act through virtual and robotic avatars, which can feed back to their user only virtual sensory information. Since avatar is user’s embodiment and body image is mostly based on senses, how virtualization of sensory inputs affects avatar self-attribution is a key question for understanding nowadays human behavior. By manipulating visual and tactile inputs in a series of experiments fashioned after the rubber hand illusion, we assessed the relative weight of the virtualization of sight (Real, Robotic, Virtual) and of touch (Real, Virtual) on artificial hand embodiment. Virtualization decreased embodiment, but unexpectedly lowest embodiment was found when only one sense was virtual. Discordant levels of virtualization of sight and touch elicited revulsion, extending the concept of the uncanny valley to avatar embodiment. Besides timing, spatial constraints and realism of feedback, a matched degree of virtualization of seen and felt stimuli is a further constraint in building the representation of the body.

Robot Expressive Motions

Robots that have different forms and capabilities are used in a wide variety of situations; however, one common point to all robots interacting with humans is their ability to communicate with them. In addition to verbal communication or purely communicative movements, robots can also use their embodiment to generate expressive movements while achieving a task, to convey additional information to its human partner. This article surveys state-of-the-art techniques that generate whole-body expressive movements in robots and robot avatars. We consider different embodiments such as wheeled, legged, or flying systems and the different metrics used to evaluate the generated movements. Finally, we discuss future areas of improvement and the difficulties to overcome to develop truly expressive motions in artificial agents.

Mirroring without Overimitation: Learning Functionally Equivalent Manipulation Actions

This paper presents a mirroring approach, inspired by the neuroscience discovery of the mirror neurons, to transfer demonstrated manipulation actions to robots. Designed to address the different embodiments between a human (demonstrator) and a robot, this approach extends the classic robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD) in the following aspects:i) It incorporates fine-grained hand forces collected by a tactile glove in demonstration to learn robot’s fine manipulative actions; ii) Through model-free reinforcement learning and grammar induction, the demonstration is represented by a goal-oriented grammar consisting of goal states and the corresponding forces to reach the states, independent of robot embodiments; iii) A physics-based simulation engine is applied to emulate various robot actions and mirrors the actions that are functionally equivalent to the human’s in the sense of causing the same state changes by exerting similar forces. Through this approach, a robot reasons about which forces to exert and what goals to achieve to generate actions (i.e., mirroring), rather than strictly mimicking demonstration (i.e., overimitation). Thus the embodiment difference between a human and a robot is naturally overcome. In the experiment, we demonstrate the proposed approach by teaching a real Baxter robot with a complex manipulation task involving haptic feedback—opening medicine bottles.

Realization of a Robot System That Plays “Darumasan-Ga-Koronda ” Game with Humans

In this paper, we describe the development of a robot that plays the “darumasan-ga- koronda” game with human players. It is a big challenge to develop a robot that can play with human players. We first observed the human–human game play and listed the problems for a robot to play the game with human players. We pointed out the following six tasks: detect players, track the detected players, decide if players are freezing (the “out” judgment), move to the nearest player, touch the player, and move back to the original position. Then, we designed a robot that uses a laser range finder (LRF) to measure the players and a robot avatar to interact with the players. Then, we developed the components needed to play the game. In this paper, we describe the details of the development of the arm to touch the player, the “out” judgment, and a function to return to the origin after finishing the game. Then, we describe an experimental result of the evaluation of the total system, as well as the track record of the demonstrations in the events.

Development of sense of self-location based on somatosensory feedback from finger tips for extra robotic thumb control

Recently, wearable extra robotic limbs that aim to enhance the functionality and capability of human operators as extra arms or fingers have become an active research subject among robotics researchers. Improving the operability of the extra robotic limbs is required for the human operators, an approach for which is to induce robotic embodiment. In this paper, we focus on the update of sense of self-location which is the key aspect of embodiment and contributes to the body representation update, and we elucidate dominant factors which induce the embodiment of an extra robotic thumb (ERT). The experiments are conducted to compare the performance of the reaching task of the ERT under three separately given conditions, of which two are somatosensory feedbacks: (1) tactile and position feedback from the fingertips and (2) tactile and position feedback from the human face, and one is a non-somatosensory feedback: (3) auditory feedback. As a result, we confirmed that the somatosensory feedback from finger tips has a large contribution for the update of sense of self-location.

When Your Robot Avatar Misbehaves You Are Likely to Apologize: An Exploration of Guilt During Robot Embodiment

Would people feel guilty if their robot avatar acted autonomously to harm someone? We examined the experience of guilt during robot avatar embodiment, a form of embodiment where the participants experience the body of a humanoid robot as if it were their own. In particular, we analyzed what happens when a robot avatar spontaneously verbally abuses someone during a conversation using the participant’s voice, without this being the intention of the participant. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design, participants embodied a humanoid robot that added either offensive or neutral words during a conversation with a confederate, and had control over the robot’s movements or not (synch. vs. asynch.). We found that guilt and shame were positively associated with offensive words and that apologizing and verbal repair were positively related to guilt. Also, body ownership was moderately associated to apologizing and verbal repair. The results suggest that people may feel guilty for the actions of their robot avatars even if they are not the real agents of these actions. The work highlights the importance of examining the moral and legal aspects related to robot embodiment technologies.

An Avatar Robot as Part of a Learning Environment

An Avatar Robot as Part of a Learning Environment

A Semblance of Aliveness

While the design of sex robots is still in the early stages, the social implications of the potential proliferation of sex robots into our lives has been heavily debated by activists and scholars from various disciplines. What is missing in the current debate on sex robots and their potential impact on human social relations is a targeted look at the boundedness and bodily expressivity typically characteristic of humans, the role that these dimensions of human embodiment play in enabling reciprocal human interactions, and the manner in which this contrasts with sex robot-human interactions. Through a fine-grained discussion of these themes, rooted in fruitful but largely untapped resources from the field of enactive embodied cognition, we explore the unique embodiment of sex robots. We argue that the embodiment of the sex robot is constituted by what we term restricted expressivity and a lack of bodily boundedness and that this is the locus of negative but also potentially positive implications. We discuss the possible benefits that these two dimensions of embodiment may have for people within a specific demographic, namely some persons on the autism spectrum. Our preliminary conclusion—that the benefits and the downsides of sex robots reside in the same capability of the robot, its restricted expressivity and lack of bodily boundedness as we call it—demands we take stock of future developments in the design of sex robot embodiment. Given the importance of evidence-based research pertaining to sex robots in particular, as reinforced by Nature (2017) for drawing correlations and making claims, the analysis is intended to set the stage for future research.

Robotic Embodiment Facilitated by Controlling Extra Robotic Thumb

Robotic Embodiment Facilitated by Controlling Extra Robotic Thumb

Influence of Embodiment and Substrate of Social Robots on Users’ Decision-Making and Attitude

We explored decision-making and attitudes from humans toward robots with different embodiments and substrates. Specifically, four types of robots were compared through experiments, namely, a virtual reality robot, an augmented reality robot, a physical robot, and a physical but tele-present robot that was displayed on a screen. For the experiments, 60 participants were divided into four groups to answer ten questions, and the robots provided advice about each question. Then, the participants chose whether to take the advice and their initial and final choices were registered. We measured each participant’s faith, attachment, social presence, and credibility toward the four robots through questionnaires. We found that the physical embodiment is significantly more favored by the participants, whereas the virtual embodiment is the less favored. Moreover, a robot sharing the same substrate as the participant is preferred over one not sharing the same substrate. These findings, their interpretation, and application to robots can lead to improved design and development of social robots.

Exploring customer experiences with robotics in hospitality

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore consumer reviews with robotics based on the five dimensions for evaluating user experiences (i.e. embodiment, emotion, human-oriented perception, feeling of security and co-experience), as derived from research in human-robot interactions (HRI).Design/methodology/approachThe study first reviews the five dimensions for evaluating user experiences in HRI and then analyzes user experiences with robotics at four hotels (i.e. Yotel New York, Aloft Cupertino, Henn-na Hotel Japan and Marriott Residence Inn LAX) based on reviews on TripAdvisor, Agoda, Yelp and Booking.com.FindingsThe findings highlight the influence of robotic embodiment and human-oriented perceptions on consumer experiences. The findings also suggest that users and robots can co-create novel experiences, with some guests even proactively seeking new opportunities to interact and communicate with robots to develop a certain level of “relationship” with them.Research limitations/implicationsAn understanding of user experiences from HRIs can inform future hospitality and tourism research and management.Practical implicationsThis study contributes to hospitality and tourism management by highlighting current practices with robotics to suggest areas of improvements for enhancing future consumer experiences.Social implicationsConsumer experiences will change rapidly as hospitality and tourism management deploys robotics in the future.Originality/valueThis is one of the early studies in the field to explore consumer experiences with robotics based on the five dimensions for evaluating user experiences from research in HRI. In doing so, this study provides a number of theoretical and managerial implications relevant for hospitality and tourism research and practice.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Integrating Technology into Practice: 2015 Research Grant: Development of a virtual reality graded exposure intervention for chronic low back pain: initial findings and future directions

BACKGROUND CONTEXT Back pain is the leading cause of disability, in the United States. Most acute low back pain (LBP) remits within a few weeks, but up to 10% of individuals develop a chronic condition characterized by long-term pain, disability, and resource cost. Maladaptive beliefs about pain and physical activity (ie, pain-related fear) contribute to poor outcomes following back injury. High fear individuals are more likely to avoid back-stressing physical activities, which they feel may exacerbate injury/damage, thus reinforcing a cycle of pain, functional disability, and potentially further injury. Graded exposure is a leading cognitive behavioral intervention to challenge fearful pain beliefs and gradually promote physical activity. PURPOSE As part of the North American Spine Society Young Investigator Grant, the current research team developed a virtual reality (VR) gaming interface as a flexible interactive platform to deliver graded-exposure intervention for high fear individuals with CLBP. A recently completed pilot study examined the safety and feasibility of this prototype, designed to challenge fearful pain beliefs and gradually promote physical activity. STUDY DESIGN/SETTING Repeated-measures lab-based intervention protocol. PATIENT SAMPLE Participants were 34 men (n=17) and women (n=17) with CLBP who reported high pain/movement-related fear, as measured by the Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia. OUTCOME MEASURES Participants completed measures of pain intensity, perceived disability, and pain-related fear prior to and following intervention. Participants also completed a measure of treatment acceptability at the conclusion of the intervention period. METHODS The gaming interface allows participants to control a customizable robot avatar via motion-tracking features of the Microsoft Kinect system. Player movement is mirrored by the movement of the robot avatar. A brief psychoeducation session preceded the VR game-play, which occurred over 3 days. Participants were asked to guide the robot through progressively more difficult, back-challenging tasks (eg, watering plants, setting up shelter) to help prepare a new planet for habitation. The tasks were graded in difficulty and derived from traditional graded exposure treatment. RESULTS Repeated-measures analyses revealed a marginal decline in pain intensity scores and a significant decline in scores on the measure of pain/movement-related fear. No significant change was observed in participant ratings of disability related to low back pain. Mean scores on the treatment evaluation inventory indicated that participants reported above moderate levels of perceived treatment acceptability and overall positive interest in the intervention. CONCLUSIONS Findings support the safety and feasibility of a VR gaming intervention model designed to deliver cognitive behavioral treatment for maladaptive pain beliefs while promoting physical activity among individuals with CLBP. The intervention tested thus far will be extended and adapted across settings. Future validation efforts will focus on reduction of pain-related disability and assessment of the longevity of observed effects. FDA DEVICE/DRUG STATUS This abstract does not discuss or include any applicable devices or drugs.

Exploiting ability for human adaptation to facilitate improved human-robot interaction and acceptance

ABSTRACTThis article reports findings from a usability and user experience evaluations conducted in the last 2 years of a 4-year assistive robotics research project using the Kompai robot. It focuses on the evaluations that were conducted with older adults in an assisted living studio in the United Kingdom (which was arranged as an open plan studio apartment), a UK residential care home, and an older couple's own home in the Netherlands over 2 days. It examines emergent adaptive human behaviour in human-robot interaction (HRI) to consider whether we are approaching the embodiment and functionality of service robots correctly. It discusses possible improvements that could be made at the systems level that better exploit people's natural ability to adapt and find workarounds to technologies and their limitations.

Effects of Augmented Reality on the Performance of Teleoperated Industrial Assembly Tasks in a Robotic Embodiment

Teleoperation in robotic embodiments allows operators to perform and program manipulation tasks with better accuracy, dexterity, and visualization than what is possible with traditional human-robot interaction paradigms. However, the perception of cues (e.g., egocentric distances) relevant to task execution, is known to be distorted in virtual environments due to many factors, which can be grouped into technical, human, and methodological categories. This phenomenon becomes more pronounced in a low-cost/encumbrance setup, where the dynamic environment is captured with color and depth (RGB-D) cameras and presented in a virtual environment. In this paper, the effects of augmented reality (AR) are evaluated as a tool to deliver additional information, which helps in overcoming the differences in perception between telepresence and actual presence. The AR feedback is used to improve the embodiment illusion and to guide the operator during task execution. The AR setup, comprising an RGB-D camera and a head-mounted display, is integrated with the Baxter robot and evaluated by involving 22 participants in an experiment while they execute a pick-and-place task, taking into account their expertise in AR/virtual reality (VR) and gaming. The use of AR results in enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of the task performance, besides significantly reducing the effect of the differences in skillfulness between the participants. Furthermore, it is found that the sense of presence and embodiment for the participant is positively affected by different types of AR.

Robot Secured Wireless Authentication Using Look-Up Table Based Coding

Securing restricted areas is a major concern for sensitive institutes, like military or research labs. Most security measures rely on having some of the biometrics that human beings possess to identify the user and grant access permissions. Yet, with the wide spread of robotic systems and avatars, these entities need to be authenticated as well, since they might require access to such facilities, hence, the need to provide security measures that can handle non-biological entities with high levels of security and that is not vulnerable to hacking is becoming essential.In this research we propose a novel and unique system for encoding the passcode that is known only to the authorized user using a specially designed look-up table. The system’s hardware requires reconfiguring doors’ security modules to have Near Field Communication (NFC) initialized inside them, and have the Robot initialized with the same hardware, and a wireless controller for the NFC will be given to the operator. The hardware has low-cost, and is easy to use since it is considered as plug and play module. XBEE was adopted as a wireless communication module between the operator and the robot in order to wirelessly connect to an NFC chip that is installed (as plug and play) on any Robotic system.

Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability.

Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.

Memristive neuron integration in digital robotic embodiment

Memristive neuron integration in digital robotic embodiment

What We Learned from Mediated Embodiment Experiments and Why It Should Matter to Policymakers

Abstract When people embody a virtual or a robotic avatar, their sense of self extends to the body of that avatar. We argue that, as a consequence, if the avatar gets harmed, the person embodied in that avatar suffers the harm in the first person. Potential scenarios involving physical or psychological harm caused to avatars gives rise to legal, moral, and policy implications that need to be considered by policymakers. We maintain that the prevailing distinction in law between “property” and “person” categories compromises the legal protection of the embodied users. We advocate for the inclusion of robotic and virtual avatars in a double category, property–person, as the property and the person mingle in one: the avatar. This hybrid category is critical to protecting users of mediated embodiment experiences both from potential physical or psychological harm and property damage.

Design Science Applied to the Virtual Support Method of the Nurse to Promote Mental Health for the Elderly and Their Caregivers

The aim of this study was to present post-doctoral results, using the artificial intelligence, avatar robot "Vilma", as a tool for interaction between the elderly and their caregivers, with the intention to promoting quality of life. Action research, developed at the Health Care Center of the Elderly and its Caregivers (CASIC/UFF), Niterói, RJ, Brazil. Approval of the Ethics and Research Committee of EEAN/UFRJ (Plataforma Brasil) - under the number: 36876114.6.0000.5238. Participants: 28 caregivers, both formal and informal. Developed application by the design science method, suitable to the science of computing and health, for being compatible with activities related to support mental health and quality of life of the elderly, as a continuous operational support to the nurse, of a spiritual biopsychosocial nature. Use of the continuous operational support application as a tool to prevent depression, and the impacts of this pathology on quality of life. It was concluded that the research product tool was considered relevant by the participants for the teaching-learning process, in the search for mental health, self-realization, self-esteem and quality of life.