Designing Robots, Designing Humans


Book Description

Whilst most research concentrates on the imagined future of robotics, this book brings together a group of international researchers to explore the different ways that robots and humans engage with one another at this point in history. Robotic design is advancing at an incredible pace, and consequently the role of robots has expanded beyond mechanical work in the industrial sector to the social and domestic environment. From kitchen table pets in the shape of dinosaurs or baby seals, to robot arms that assist with eating, to self-driving cars, this book explores the psychological impact of robotic engagement, especially in domestic settings. Each chapter explores a different aspect of humanoid robotics, for example, the relationship between robotics and gender, citizenship, moral agency, ethics, inequality, and psychological development, as well as exploring the growing role of robots in education, care work, and intimate relationships. Drawing on research from across the fields of psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, this ground-breaking volume discusses the emerging social side of robotics. By examining our relationship with robots now, this book offers a new and innovative opportunity for understanding our future with robots and robotic culture. Designing Robots, Designing Humans will be interest to researchers of artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics, as well as researchers from cognitive and social psychology, philosophy, computer science, anthropology, linguistics, and engineering backgrounds.




Hello, Robot


Book Description




Human-Robot Interaction


Book Description

The role of robots in society keeps expanding and diversifying, bringing with it a host of issues surrounding the relationship between robots and humans. This introduction to human–robot interaction (HRI) by leading researchers in this developing field is the first to provide a broad overview of the multidisciplinary topics central to modern HRI research. Written for students and researchers from robotics, artificial intelligence, psychology, sociology, and design, it presents the basics of how robots work, how to design them, and how to evaluate their performance. Self-contained chapters discuss a wide range of topics, including speech and language, nonverbal communication, and processing emotions, plus an array of applications and the ethical issues surrounding them. This revised and expanded second edition includes a new chapter on how people perceive robots, coverage of recent developments in robotic hardware, software, and artificial intelligence, and exercises for readers to test their knowledge.




Designing Robot Behavior in Human-Robot Interactions


Book Description

In this book, we have set up a unified analytical framework for various human-robot systems, which involve peer-peer interactions (either space-sharing or time-sharing) or hierarchical interactions. A methodology in designing the robot behavior through control, planning, decision and learning is proposed. In particular, the following topics are discussed in-depth: safety during human-robot interactions, efficiency in real-time robot motion planning, imitation of human behaviors from demonstration, dexterity of robots to adapt to different environments and tasks, cooperation among robots and humans with conflict resolution. These methods are applied in various scenarios, such as human-robot collaborative assembly, robot skill learning from human demonstration, interaction between autonomous and human-driven vehicles, etc. Key Features: Proposes a unified framework to model and analyze human-robot interactions under different modes of interactions. Systematically discusses the control, decision and learning algorithms to enable robots to interact safely with humans in a variety of applications. Presents numerous experimental studies with both industrial collaborative robot arms and autonomous vehicles.




Robot Learning Human Skills and Intelligent Control Design


Book Description

This book focusses on robotic skill learning and intelligent control for robotic manipulators including enabling of robots to efficiently learn motor and stiffness/force regulation policies from humans. It explains transfer of human limb impedance control strategies to the robots so that the adaptive impedance control for the robot can be realized.




My Robot Gets Me


Book Description

Your relationships with your "smart" products are about to get a lot more personal. Think how commonplace it is now for people to ask Siri for the weather forecast, deploy Roomba to clean their homes, or summon Alexa to turn on the lights. The "smart home" market will reach well over $100 billion in the next five years on the promise of products that are truly integrated with our cooking, cleaning, entertainment, security, and hygiene habits. But the reality is, these first-generation "smart" products aren't very smart—yet. We're clearly seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of capability and how such products can enhance our lives. How do we take it to the next level? In a word, design—and more specifically, social design. In this fascinating and instructive book, leading product design expert Carla Diana describes how new technology is allowing designers to humanize consumer products in delightfully subtle ways. Showcasing vivid examples of social design principles such as "product presence," "object expression," and "interaction intelligence," we see how inventive uses of light, sound, and movement can evoke human responses to even the most mundane products. Diana offers clear guidelines and takeaways for conceptualizing, building, and optimizing products using such methods as bodystorming, scenario storyboarding, video prototyping, behavior charting, and more. My Robot Gets Me provides keen insights and practical advice to anyone interested or involved in the burgeoning smart marketplace, from product designers and developers to managers and venture capitalists.




People Aren't Robots


Book Description

This book will help marketers, brand managers, and advertising executives who may have less experience in the research industry create great questionnaires and collect high quality data. It will also help academic and experienced researchers write questionnaires that are better suited for the general population, particularly when using research panels and customer lists. This book was conceived by experienced researcher with more than fifteen years of practical experience who realized that many questionnaire guides continue to treat the people who answer questionnaires as robots rather than as fallible, imperfect people. Topics include general considerations related to the process, how to write screener questions, how to write data quality questions, and how to tackle specific types of questions from single-selects, grids, scales, and more.




Designing Sociable Robots


Book Description

Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because the most successful sociable robots will share our social characteristics, the effort to make sociable robots is also a means for exploring human social intelligence and even what it means to be human. Breazeal defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization. Much of the book focuses on a nascent sociable robot she designed named Kismet. Breazeal offers a concrete implementation for Kismet, incorporating insights from the scientific study of animals and people, as well as from artistic disciplines such as classical animation. This blending of science, engineering, and art creates a lifelike quality that encourages people to treat Kismet as a social creature rather than just a machine. The book includes a CD-ROM that shows Kismet in action.




Emotional Design in Human-Robot Interaction


Book Description

While social robots participation increases in everyday human life, their presence in diverse contexts and situations is expected. At the same point, users tend to become more demanding regarding their roles, abilities, behaviour and appearance. Thus, designers and developers are confronted with the need to design more sophisticated robots that can produce such a positive reaction from users so as to become well accepted in various cases of use. Like this, Human-Robot Interaction has become a developing area. Emotions are an important part in human life, since they mediate the interaction with other humans, entities and/or products. In recent years, there has been an increase in the importance of emotions applied to the design field, giving rise to the so-called Emotional Design area. In the case of Human-Robot Interaction, the emotional design can help to elicit (e.g., pleasurable) or prevent (e.g., unpleasant) emotional/affective reactions/responses. This book gives a practical introduction to emotional design in human-robot interaction and supports designers with knowledge and research tools to help them take design decisions based on a User-Centred Design approach. It should also be useful to people interested in design processes, even if not directly related to the design of social robots but, instead, to other technology-based artefacts. The text is meant as a reference source with practical guidelines and advice for design issues.