Author: bartneck

Dr. Christoph Bartneck is an associate professor and director of postgraduate studies at the HIT Lab NZ of the University of Canterbury. He has a background in Industrial Design and Human-Computer Interaction, and his projects and studies have been published in leading journals, newspapers, and conferences. His interests lie in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Science and Technology Studies, and Visual Design.

The One About Ethics

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 Robots are not just machines. We treat them as if they were somewhat like humans, including applying moral standards and expectations to them. Our behavior towards robots matters. The way we treat them reveals much about ourselves. In today’s episode, we will talk about how being nice is not the opposite of being cruel to them. I invited Bob Douglas and Mary Blossom from the AI Research Institute to introduce us to the topic. They agreed to produce a short podcast dialogue to get us started. I then discussed their introduction with Michael-John Turp and Minyi Wang.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-032-The-One-About-Ethics

ISSN 2703-4054

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Puffery, Bullshit and Lies

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Robots and AI are being portrayed in overly optimistic videos, television shows and advertisements. Tesla’s Optimus robot is a prime example. In this episode Dwain Allan and Christoph Bartneck interview John Petrocelli and Nick Lee on how this puffery, bullshit and lies affect consumers and vulnerable people. Such as Suzanne Barron, who believes that robots are possessed by Satan.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-031-Puffery-Bullshit-And-Lies

ISSN 2703-4054

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Humanoidization: Costs, Demand, and the Future of Work

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Humanoid robot companies are promising that humanoids will fast become our friends, colleagues, employees, and the backbone of our workforce. As Elon Musk described it when he first unveiled Tesla’s Optimus: “It will upend our idea of what the economy is… it will be able to do basically anything humans don’t want to do… it’s going to bring an age of abundance.”

But how close are we to this reality? What are the key costs associated with operating a humanoid? Can companies deploy them profitably? Will humanoids take our jobs, and if so, what should we be doing to prepare? To explore these questions, Dwain Allan and I interviewed Will Jackson, Jo Cribb, and Bruce McDonald.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-030-Humanoidization-Costs-Demand-and-the-Future-of-Work

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The New Humanoids

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A new wave of humanoids entered the scene, and their creators promised us a bright future. Atlas, Figure, and Optimus are intended to work in spaces that are designed for humans. They are not only targeted at factories, but also at our homes and families. But what promises can they actually meet? Dwain Allan and I interviewed Will Jackson and Robert Riener on the future of humanoids.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

ISSN 2703-4054

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After the hype: what can AI really do for human-robot interaction?

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Artificial Intelligence promise to improve many aspects of our lives. The current hype, in particular around Large Language Model, raises the questions what of these bold visions of the future is science and what is fiction. AI is not new in HRI. For many decades researchers used it to enable robots to better interact with humans. In this episode I talked with Julie Adams and David Kaber about what AI can really do for HRI.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

ISSN 2703-4054

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Peer Review Review

The limits of the peer review process

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The peer review process is essential to modern science. Researchers conduct studies and submit their results to a journal. An editor manages a review process involving external experts. But what happens when you study the peer review process itself? How do scientific organisations react when they become the subject of an experiment? Not well, to say the least.

This live recording is from the Nerd Night at the Little Andromeda Theatre in Christchuch, New Zealand.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

ISSN 2703-4054

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Should you use chatGPT?

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Should you use chatGPT for podcasting? I asked chatGPT this question and used Descript’s Overdub feature to voice the response. Generating this episode was quicker than any other I ever created. Is it any good? Probably not. Still, it shows how quickly it is possible to generate superficial content. This might be useful for enabling robots to have superficial conversations with people. Just don’t expect any originality or accuracy.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-026-Should-I-Use-ChatGPT

ISSN 2703-4054

The HRI Journal Publishing Guide

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Publishing your human-robot interaction study in a journal is an excellent way to share your insights. But in which journal should you publish and what do the journals expect? In this episode, we talk to editors from the three dedicated HRI journals, Agnieszka Wykowska (International Journal of Social Robotics), Selma Sabanovic (ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction) and Bilge Mutlu (Frontiers in Robotics and AI | Human-Robot Interaction). We talk about Open Access publishing and what the future of scientific publishing might look like. Besides the three dedicated journals, there are also some journals that encourage HRI topics without focusing completely on them. I talked with Kerstin Dautenhahn from the Interaction Studies journal and Ramanarayan Vasudevan from the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-025-The-HRI-Journal-Publishing-Guide

Here is a table with all the key indicators for the journals. The full table is available online.

NameIEEE TROIJO Social RoboticsInteraction StudiesFrontiers in Robotics and AI HRIACM THRI
PublisherIEEESpringerJohn BenjaminsFrontiersACM
Founded in19852009200420182012
Acceptance rate20364867
Average papers are published per year183113222252
Average number of revisions for accepted papers2.5222
Average number of reviewers per submitted paper322.533
Number of associate editors7253271144
Average duration of peer review9023125123107
Peer review typeSingle blindSingle blindSingle blindSingle blindSingle blind
Average duration publishing process60310147270
Listed in ScopusYesYesYesYesYes
Publications quartile in Scopusnot availableQ1Q1Q2not available
CiteScore12.76.93.74.95.3
Listed on Web of ScienceYesYesYesYesNo
Impact Factor7.84.71.53.45.1
Ppen access optionYes (optional)Yes (optional)Yes (optional)Yes (required)Yes (required)
Article Publication Fee2345369019272125$0 required, $1300 optional
Pre-publication allowedYesYesYesYesYes

ISSN 2703-4054

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Writing for the second edition completed

We finished writing the second edition of our book and I hope that it will be published this year. We added one new chapter on “How people perceive robots” and we dramatically extended the chapter on how a robot works with the latest developments in artificial intelligence. We also added and updated references, photos of robots and the index. Another important update was the inclusion of teaching material. The book now provides questions and answers that can be used in class.

Second Edition Writing Workshop

We started to write on our second edition of “Human-Robot Interaction” to be published with Cambridge University Press and Hanser in 2023. The writing workshop took place in Christchurch and we made great progress. We have a brand new chapter, extension to existing sections and exercise questions for students. Can’t wait for this book to come out.