Regular Session #4

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Do Sensory Preferences of Children with Autism Impact an Imitation Task with a Robot?

Pauline Chevalier, Gennaro Raiola, Brice Isableu, Jean-Claude Martin, Christophe Bazile, Adriana Tapus

In this paper, we sought to assess through an experimental imitation task protocol using a robot Nao whether sensory profiles of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) influence their capabilities to imitate or to initiate gestures. We based our work on the hypothesis that children with an overreliance on proprioceptive cues and hyporeactivity to visual cues will have greater difficulty imitating and will improve their skills more slowly than children with an overreliance on visual cues and hyporeactivity to proprioceptive cues. Our subject pool composed of 12 children and teenagers with ASD participated in seven imitation sessions over eight weeks. As expected, we observed that children with an overreliance on proprioceptive cues and hyporeactivity to visual cues had more difficulty imitating the robot than the other children. Moreover, the children exhibited positive effect in the social behavior (gaze to the partner, imitations) toward a human partner after the sessions with the robot.


How to open a robot guided museum tour? Strategies to establish a focused encounter in HRI.

Raphaela Gehle, Karola Pitsch, Timo Dankert, Sebastian Wrede

On the basis of a wizard-of-oz-videocorpus in a museum guide scenario, we address the challenge of choosing, when to open an interaction with a potential interactional partner. Using different sets of sensory data (external HD cams, internal robot vision and kinect data) for analysis, we focus on describing the visitors’ behavior and the implications for opening an interaction with (a) a visitor who is mainly interested in looking at the exhibition and (b) a visitor who is accessable to interact during his roundcourse. We therefore use a wizard-of-oz scenario to gather insights into the process of decision making to establish the stepwise process of opening. Analysis shows, that the wizards decisions highly depend on monitoring of the situated visitor activities.


Predicting and Regulating Participation Equality in Human-robot Conversations: Effects of Age and Gender

Gabriel Skantze

In this paper, we investigate participation equality in multi-party human-robot conversations. We analyse a dataset where pairs of users (540 in total) interact with a conversational robot exhibited at a technical museum. The data encompass a wide range of different users in terms of age (adults/children) and gender, in different combinations. The results show that the participation equality differs a lot depending on the different demographic combinations. We also show that it is possible for the robot to regulate the turn-taking in order to reduce the imbalance, but that different user groups react differently to these signals. Finally, we show that it is possible to predict the imbalance at an early stage in the interaction, in order to mitigate the imbalance as early as possible, and that knowledge about the users’ age and gender helps in this prediction.


Threatening Flocks and Mindful Snowflakes: How Group Entitativity Affects Perceptions of Robots

Marlena Fraune, Yusaku Nishiwaki, Selma Sabanovic, Eliot Smith, Michio Okada

Robots are expected to become present in society in increasing numbers, yet few studies in human-robot interaction (HRI) go beyond one-to-one interaction to examine how characteristics of robot groups will affect HRI. In particular, people may show more negative or aggressive behavior toward entitative (i.e., cohesive) robot groups, like they do toward entitative human groups, compared to diverse groups. Furthermore, because people in collectivist (e.g. Japan) and individualistic (e.g. US) cultures respond to groups and cues of entitativity differently, entitative robot groups may affect people differently across such cultures. This study examines how robot Entitativity Condition (Single Robots, Diverse Group, Entitative Group) and Country (USA, Japan) affect emotions toward, mind attributions to, and willingness to interact with robots. Results indicate that Entitative robot groups, compared to Single robots, were viewed more negatively. Entitative robots were also found to be more threatening than Diverse robots. Diverse robot groups, compared to Single robots, were viewed as having more mind, and participants were more willing to interact with them. These findings were similar in the USA and Japan. This indicates that robot group entitativity and diversity is critical to keep in mind when designing robots.


S/he’s too Warm/Agentic! The Influence of Gender on Uncanny Reactions to Robots

Jahna Otterbacher, Michael Talias

Gender-based stereotypes are strong influences on human-human interactions. Given our tendency to anthropomorphize, it is not surprising that incorporating gender cues into a robot’s design can influence its perception and acceptance by humans. However, little is known about the interaction between human and robot gender. We focus on the role of gender in eliciting negative, affective reactions from observers (i.e., the “uncanny effect”). We create a corpus of YouTube videos featuring robots with female, male and no gender cues. Our experiment is grounded in Gray and Wegner’s (2012) model, which holds that uncanny reactions are driven by one’s interpretation of robot agency (i.e., ability to plan and control) and experience (i.e., ability to feel), which in turn, is driven by robot appearance and behavior (i.e., humanlikeness). Participants watched videos and completed questionnaires to gauge perceptions of robots as well as affective reactions. We used Structural Equation Modeling to test whether the model explains reactions of both men and women. For gender-neutral robots, it does; however, we find a salient human-robot gender interaction. Men’s uncanny reactions to robots with female cues are due to the perception of their ability to experience, while women’s negativity toward masculine robots is driven by the perception of agency. The result is interpreted in light of the “Big Two” dimensions of person perception, which underlie expectations for women to be warm and men to be agentic. When a robot meets these expectations too well, it increases the chances of an uncanny reaction in the other-gender observer.


Why Do They Refuse to Use My Robot?: Reasons of Non-Use Derived from a Long-Term Home Study

Maartje de Graaf, Somaya Ben Allouch, Jan van Dijk

Research on why people refuse or abandon the use of technology in general, and robots specifically, is still scarce. Consequently, the academic understanding of people’s underlying reasons for non-use remains weak. However, refusers and abandoners are just as important as users because they can delay the acceptance and development process of innovative technologies. Investigating user experiences with robots in people’s private spaces over a longer period of time provides vital information about the design of these robots including their acceptance and refusal or abandonment by its users. The results of our long-term home study show that each group of non-users provided different reasons why they refused or abandoned the use of the robot. Understanding the thoughts and motives behind non-use may identify obstacles for acceptance, and therefore enable designers to better adapt technological designs to the benefits of the users.

Event Timeslots (1)

Wed, Mar 8
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Personal Factors in HRI