In designing socially interactive robots we have focused on robot movement and its role in multi-modal human-robot communication. In this chapter we describe design and evaluation of robot body movements supporting communication, investigating the idea of using speed and orientation adjustments as design elements in human-robot interaction. The scenario studied includes a robotic shopping trolley that offers products via speech and GUI to the user while both are moving in a supermarket-like environment. Our results show that if the robot slows down while making such offers, users are more prone to react upon them and to take the product. However, even from our early pre-study with mock-up robots we observed that users tended not to mention the robot’s slow-down movements, even if these movements were shown several times to them during a video-based debriefing. This phenomenon, that users react implicitly on the robot’s movements without being consciously aware of them, was confirmed during an experimental study with a fully integrated robot prototype. We discuss our results by reflecting on human-robot interaction design methods, and we draw implications from the lessons learned in the study of the design of robot behaviours. In particular, we list a whole set of challenges for HRI when both the user and the robot are moving.

In this paper we provide a possible characterisation of user behaviour based on an analysis of a corpus of human-robot communication, collected by using the Wizard-of-Oz technique to elicit communicative behaviour. We distinguish between three general types of user behaviour: uniform user behaviour, idiosyncratic user behaviour and distinguishing user behaviour. We also present an analysis of user behaviour that can be characterized in terms of overall task organisation (i.e., interaction episodes) and behaviour that is intimately connected to communicative behaviour. We also discuss to what extent manipulation of objects to prepare the environment can be used to group users along the dimensions: task- vs. interaction-orientation and control vs. monitoring. Using this typology we discuss categorisation into four dimensions of use: Directors, Manipulators, Pointers and Players. To support these use dimensions we propose a set of adaptation foci (Focus on Feedback or Action, and on Proactive or Reactive behaviour).

In studies of human-robot communication we have observed that the robot's inability to give appropriate communicative feedback for contact and perception causes miscommunication [2]. The purpose of this paper is to motivate the need for and give air initial characterisation of a model for communicative contact and perception feedback. One component of a such a model could be a kind of low-level user model aiming to decide the perceptual status of the user. We have analysed an example of inter-action that shows signs of miscommunication that is related to feedback problems concerning contact and perception. Using the analysis to pinpoint the source. of these problem,,; we provide tin initial account for the type of information sources that a low-level user that handles communicative contact and perception feedback should comprise. We also provide two design examples that in our view motivates this explorative effort.

This paper investigates a prototype of an interaction design for a flexible natural language user interface with a minimal set of gestures and natural language commands. The prototype is evaluated using a Hi-Fi simulation approach that allows the enactment of an interfaces that accommodates gesture and speech input for directive commands. In the scenario users were guiding a robot equipped with a camera and microphone through a simple maze. The data from six users were collected and subsequently analysed with respect to the users' communicative behavior. In the analysis of the data special consideration was given to the gesture repertoire. It was found that users, when presented with static images of gestures, added their own dynamic patterns. Furthermore the users appeared to give precedence to the deictic component of gestures that meant left/right. Users were also opportunistic meaning that when they could they used predefined goal points and let the robot use its autonomous navigation to find its way.

Ett ständigt aktuellt tema är studenter som upplever att undervisningsformerna karakteriseras av leda (se Daschman et al 2013) och lärare som tycker sig se ett bristande engagemang (se Foley 2013). Intrycket från en programmeringskurs med fokus på mobilappar och tjänster var projekten som studenterna skapade brast i konceptuell och teknisk höjd.  Vare sig studenter eller lärare tyckte kursen var särskilt intressant.  Två samverkande omständigheter identifierades: 

• Lärarna förmådde inte att relevantgöra innehållet på ett engagerade och inspirerande sätt.  
• Studenterna tyckte innehållet var för svårt och vågade inte chansa. 

Foley (2013) diskuterar hur lärare kör på i trygga banor (complacency) och inte engagerar sig, något som leder till studenter som inte gör mer än vad som krävs. Faktorer som undervisningens upplägg, över- eller understimulering leder till alltså till brist på engagemang och avhopp.  Det som krävs är en mer varierad, engagerande och individanpassad undervisning.  För att bryta detta har pedagogiken ändrats på kursen för att skapa engagemang på olika sätt.   

Kraven ställs på ett annat sätt:  genom att använda noggrant kvalificerade värdeladdade ord för att beskriva kraven på studenternas projekt och laborationer. Exempelvis ska tekniska laborationer ska vara ”avancerade” och tjänsterna/koncepten ”spännande” eller ”unika”.  Vi är dock tydliga med att utmaningarna i sig är något som studenterna får misslyckas med. Istället för att ställa omöjliga krav uppmanar vi studenterna utforska gränserna (”hur spännande kan det bli?”).   

Praktikbaserade gemenskaper (efter Wenger, Farnsworth et al 2016):  redovisning av laborationer och projekt genomförs i ett interaktivt muntligt format där studenterna själva väljer vad de vill fokusera på inom ramen för en kritisk diskussion. Studenterna sätter därmed sin egen agenda inom kursens tematiska ram där de kan fokusera på teknologi eller på tjänsteutveckling. Genom att de specificerar sina egna tekniska laborationer direkt i dialog med läraren får de omedelbar återkoppling. Studenterna får också till uppgift att designa en lösning som representerar ett för dem verkligt problem – något som kräver engagemang och en gemensam orientering mot kursinnehållet. Kursinnehållet och fokus kommer alltså inte längre från lärarna utan från studenterna som investerat sitt eget skapande (och tänkande).  Lärarna engageras sig för att inte framstå som okunniga inför studenterna.   

En mycket försiktig tendens i kursutvärderingar av två omgångar av kursen genomförd nya sättet är att studenter fortfarande tycker laborationerna är för svåra, men samtidigt att anser de att kursen är givande.   

Referenser  

Daschmann, E. C., Goetz, T., & Stupnisky, R. H. (2014). Exploring the antecedents of boredom: Do teachers know why students are bored? Teaching and Teacher Education, 39, 22–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.11.009 Farnsworth, V, Kleanthous, I and Wenger-Trayner, E (2016) Communities of practice as a social theory of learning: A conversation with Etienne Wenger. British Journal of Educational Studies, 64 (2). pp. 139-160. ISSN 0007-1005 Foley, J.A., 2013. Places of Belonging: Awakening a Zone of Complacency. Critical Questions in Education, 4(3), pp. 205–212.  

Natural language user interfaces for robots with cognitive capabilities should be designed to reduce the occurrence of miscommunication in order to be perceived as providing a smooth and intuitive interaction to its users. This paper describes how miscommunication analysis is integrated in the design process. Observations from 12 user sessions revealed that users misunderstand the robot's functionality; and that feedback sometimes is ill-timed with respect to the situation. We provide a set of design implications to prevent errors from occurring, to influence or adapt to users' behavior.

In the CommRob project1 we are investigating Robot Assisted Shopping. We are considering the effects on usability when allowing for mixed-initiative dialogue. It is noted that when adding a robotic assistant to a scenario that was previously involving only one agent, two new tasks are created: collaborative interaction, and learning an interface. Evaluation of mixed-initiative dialogue becomes complicated because it is not straightforward to separate the overall task performance from the attributes brought by mixed-initiative interaction.

This paper describes how the Wizard-of-Oz framework can be applied to a service robotics scenario. A scenario the Home Tour Scenario - involving a collaborative service discovery and configuration multimodal dialogue for the robot is described. The role of the wizard operators producing dialogue and robot movements is discussed as well as the specific simulation tools used: the Dialogue Production Tool and the Joystick Navigation Tool. Some attention will be paid to the pilot studies performed as a preparation for the unified Home Tour Scenario.

This paper describes the development of a fetch-and-carry robot to assist physically impaired people in an office environment. Different methods involving users are employed in the project, including the task analysis, Hi-Fi simulation trials and focus group sessions. Through an iterative design process, a prototype robot system has been developed, with an enhanced robot platform including a graphical user interface and natural language interface. The users' need for continuous feedback from the robot has led to the development of an animated character (CERO), which relates the two interface components and indicates the robot's current state by using simple gestures

This paper describes the development process of a contextualized corpus for research on Human-Robot Communication. The data have been collected in two Wizard-of-Oz user studies performedwith 22 and 5 users respectively in a scenario that is called the HomeTour. In this scenario the users show the environment (a single room, or a whole floor) to the robot using a combination of speech and gestures. The corpus has been transcribed and annotated with respect to gestures and conversational acts, thus forming a core annotation. We have also annotated or linked other types of data, e.g., laser range finder readings, positioning analysis, questionnaire data and task descriptions that form the annotated context of the scenario. By providing a rich set of different annotated data, thecorpus is thus an important resource both for research on natural language speech interfaces for robots and for research on human-robot communication in general.

In a future scenario where many devices can be controlled using the voice, easy and intuitive access will be crucial for avoiding cognitive overload when users are faced with many different systems and interaction models. We propose a model for interaction with spoken language interfaces applied to heterogeneous tasks for service robots, based on the idea of using a family of lifelike characters,, We argue that we can signal important features of the speech interface by using certain visual cues. The aim is to facilitate learning and transfer between interfaces. We discuss challenges for dialogue design affecting learnability in the light of the speech interface constructed for our full-scale robot prototype CERO.

We describe a user-centered approach to the process of designing spoken dialogues for commanding robots. Using scenarios and synthetic dialogues followed by simulated trials with real users we built a spoken language interface for commanding an office robot. Initial evaluation with the implemented system has brought interesting questions concerning the feedback necessary for interacting with a robot that has no screen. We are using a small life-like character placed upon the robot who is able of displaying conversational gestures. We have performed initial evaluations on video recorded material which have raised issues concerning low-level feedback, timing and sequencing of commands in dialogue

Today, it is common that a team of clinicians, from different disciplines, instead of one single doctor, care for a patient. This is especially true when it concerns more complicated diseases in highly specialised health care. Going from one doctor to a team of doctors raises new dimensions/problems/issues when deciding about the diagnosis and how to treat the patient. Instead of one person deciding, based on the information given from others, a group of people need to agree on a decision. How do the participants during such decision meetings argue for their experience and skill? What kind of technologies are available and how do they support the communication in the meeting? Måseide (2006), for example, focuses on how different forms of evidence influence and regulate the judgements and decisions of medical practitioners during such meetings. Groth et al. (2008), for example, focuses on the technology used during such meetings, with a focus on audio, video, and images.

In designing socially interactive robotswe have focused on robot movement and its role in multi-modal human-robot communication. In this paper we describe a user-centred design and evaluation process, investigating the idea of using speed and orientation adjustments as design elements in human-robot interaction. The scenario studied includes a robotic shopping trolley that offers products to the user while both are moving in a supermarket-like environment. Our results show that if the robot slows down while making such offers, users are more prone to react upon them. However, in an early pre-study, performed only with a robot mock-up, we observed that users tended not to notice the robot's slow-down movements while offers are made, even if these movements were shown several times to them during a video-based debriefing. This phenomenon, that users react implicitly on the robot'smovements without being consciously aware of them, was confirmed during an experimental study with a fully integrated robot prototype.We discuss our results by reflecting on human-robot interaction design methods, and we propose implications from the lessons learnt in the study of the design of robot behaviours.

This paper describes the experiences from the iterative design of a fetch-and-carry-robot, to be used by motion-impaired people in an office environment. A user-centered approach was chosen, involving several steps of information elicitation to inform the design. We describe the main elements of the design process, the communication and interaction components of the final prototype system, and an evaluation of the system in the form of a longitudinal study. Results from this study confirmed that continuous testing with users is extremely important in the design process for service robots. The trials have also revealed that interaction design for robots should not focus only on the individual user, but that other members in the environment can be seen "secondary users" or "bystanders" who tend to relate to the robot actively in various ways. We conclude that these social and collaborative issues should be studied in future research.

This study explores how students within higher education perceive different types of peer review feedback and how that feedback affects their learning. The study builds on a previous paper [1] where the Blackboard peer assessment tool was used, and compared three feedback conditions: positive, mixed, and negative. The findings strongly indicated that students preferred negative feedback, corresponding to earlier research showing that experienced students seem to benefit from negative feedback [2].

To explore the students perception on feedback, we designed an academic course to incorporate peer review assessment. The course was held during autumn 2018 and included 75 bachelor students. Students were required to individually complete a set of four review assignments using the school’s learning management system, ITs learning (ITs). Each of the four peer review assignments were designed to represent a different approach to feedback. The first assignment instructed the students to only give positive feedback in the review process; e.g., “choose three things that are positive”. The second assignment had instructions without suggesting valence in the feedback and asked the students to “examine how the argumentation is included in the text”. The third assignment instructed the students to provide negative feedback, by asking them to “point towards at least three areas for improvement”. The fourth assignment instructed the students to validate the feasibility of a written research proposal by their study peer, again without suggesting a valence of positive or negative. By consciously designing the four peer review assignments to produce specific kinds of feedback, we aimed to learn more about how the students experience such different types of peer review.

Based on focus group interviews, we have so far found that the students perceive it harder to give positive compared than negative feedback. They also perceive giving feedback, rather than receiving feedback, as a more important experience in learning. The latter will be especially interesting when compared against earlier research [3] which showed that providing peer feedback had several potential learning benefits for the provider. A preliminary finding of our study is that the transition from earlier levels of design critique during digital development projects to academically founded criticism and review requires careful instructions and pedagogic considerations. In order to further evaluate the students' experience, a questionnaire will be distributed at the end of the course (end of Oct. 2018).

The findings presented in this study aim to work as a backdrop for future discussions about how to design peer-review assignments in higher education to increase students’ academic literacy.

References:

[1] Kidd, J., Hankins, M., “The effects of peer review in students learning: a comparison of positive and negative feedback.”. 10th International Technology, Education and Development Conference, Valencia, Spain, March 7-9, 2016.

[2] Fishbach, A., Eyal, T., & Finkelstein, S. R., “How positive and negative feedback motivate goal pursuit.” in Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(8), 517-530, 2010.

[3] Van Popta, E., Kral, M., Camp, G., Martens, R. L., & Simons, P. R. J., “Exploring the value of peer feedback in online learning for the provider.” in Educational Research Review, 20, 24-34, 2017.

To an increasing extent, robots are being designed to become a part of the lives of ordinary people. This calls for new models of the interaction between humans and robots, taking advantage of human social and communicative skills. Furthermore, human-robot relationships must be understood in the context of use of robots, and based on empirical studies of humans and robots in real settings. This paper discusses social aspects of interaction with a service robot, departing from our experiences of designing a fetch-and-carry robot for motion-impaired users in an office environment. We present the motivations behind the design of the Cero robot, especially its communication paradigm. Finally, we discuss experiences from a recent usage study, and research issues emerging from this work. A conclusion is that addressing only the primary user in service robotics is unsatisfactory, and that the focus should be on the setting, activities and social interactions of the group of people where the robot is to be used.

Robots are increasingly being used in domestic environments and should be able to interact with inexperienced users. Human-human interaction and human-computer interaction research findings are relevant, but often limited because robots are different from both humans and computers. Therefore, new human-robot interaction (HRI) research methods can inform the design of robots suitable for inexperienced users. A video-based HRI (VHRI) methodology was here used to carry out a multi-national HRI user study for the prototype domestic robot BIRON (BIelefeld RObot companioN). Previously, the VHRI methodology was used in constrained HRI situations, while in this study HRIs involved a series of events as part of a 'home-tour' scenario. Thus, the present work is the first study of this methodology in extended HRI contexts with a multi-national approach. Participants watched videos of the robot interacting with a human actor and rated two robot behaviors (Extrovert and Introvert). Participants' perceptions and ratings of the robot's behaviors differed with regard to both verbal interactions and person following by the robot. The study also confirms that the VHRI methodology provides a valuable means to obtain early user feedback, even before fully working prototypes are available. This can usefully guide the future design work on robots, and associated verbal and non-verbal behaviors.