Blog – Human Robot Interaction

Where Are The Robots We Were Promised?

This episode is a live recording of the Raising the Bar event that took place on 10 September 2024 in Christchurch, New Zealand. I explore the long-standing promise of robots that would handle household tasks and serve as teachers, caregivers, and companions. Despite advancements in social robots, they remain absent from our daily lives. Figures like Elon Musk continue to push the dream of humanoid robots, yet we must first ask what tasks are best left to humans. The rise of human-like robots also challenges us to reflect on our own identity and humanity.

Transcript

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

HRI-Podcast-Episode-033-Where-Are-The-Robots-We-Were-Promised

ISSN 2703-4054

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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

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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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Suzanne Barron
Helplines & Support
Your Cousin From Boston Dynamics Samuel Adams Super Bowl ad
Elon Musk unveils plan for ‘Tesla Bot’ with man dancing in a bodysuit
Tesla Optimus Robot Can Fold A Shirt
Still Not Significant
Clarity Communications by John Leaver who operates Digital Engine
Music: Remembering Past Everything by P C III is licensed under an Attribution License.

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

ISSN 2703-4054

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Don’t Worry About the Robots NEW UPDATED FOR AI & COVID-19
Ameca
Marc Raibert: Boston Dynamics and the Future of Robotics

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.

Name	IEEE TRO	IJO Social Robotics	Interaction Studies	Frontiers in Robotics and AI HRI	ACM THRI
Publisher	IEEE	Springer	John Benjamins	Frontiers	ACM
Founded in	1985	2009	2004	2018	2012
Acceptance rate	20	36	48		67
Average papers are published per year	183	113	22	22	52
Average number of revisions for accepted papers	2.5	2	2		2
Average number of reviewers per submitted paper	3	2	2.5	3	3
Number of associate editors	72	53	27	11	44
Average duration of peer review	90	23	125	123	107
Peer review type	Single blind	Single blind	Single blind	Single blind	Single blind
Average duration publishing process	60	310		147	270
Listed in Scopus	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Publications quartile in Scopus	not available	Q1	Q1	Q2	not available
CiteScore	12.7	6.9	3.7	4.9	5.3
Listed on Web of Science	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Impact Factor	7.8	4.7	1.5	3.4	5.1
Ppen access option	Yes (optional)	Yes (optional)	Yes (optional)	Yes (required)	Yes (required)
Article Publication Fee	2345	3690	1927	2125	$0 required, $1300 optional
Pre-publication allowed	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

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Flaky Conferences and Journals in Human-Robot Interaction

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.