hri – 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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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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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

ISSN 2703-4054

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Flaky Conferences and Journals in Human-Robot Interaction

Emotions And Consciousness In Robots

The full interview with Douglas Campbell

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In the last HRI podcast episode we talked about the role of emotions for humans and robots. The interview with Douglas Campbell truly inspired me and there was not enough time in the last episode to go into the full depth of our conversation. So here it is, our full discussion about emotions and consciousness in robots.

Transcript

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

HRI-Podcast-Episode-021-Emotions-And-Consciousness-In-Robots-Transcript

ISSN 2703-4054

Important Links

Problems of Philosophy – The Limits of Inquiry by C.McGinn
Other Minds by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Artificial consciousness by Wikipedia

There is method to the madness

I talked about HRI methods with Tony Belpaeme.

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The success of Human Robot Interaction depends on utilizing our understanding of the interaction between humans and robots in the development of new technology. These new technologies then need to be rigorously tested to proof their benefit. In other words, it is time for an HRI study. In this episode we will discuss some of the major decision you need to make when designing a study with Tony Belpaeme who recently published a book chapter entitled “Advice to new human-robot interaction researchers”. Choose wisely, for while the true study will bring you knowledge, the false study will take it from you.

Transcript

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

HRI-Podcast-Episode-016-There-Is-Method-To-The-Madness-Transcript

ISSN 2703-4054

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The Good Robot

How can a robot act ethically?

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Humans have asked themselves since the beginning of time “What is good”? While we have some consensus and even laws, teaching a robot to act ethically remains a delicate problem. It certainly requires more than three laws. How can a robot know what to do while operating in an uncertain world? I interviewed Sean Welsh on Ethics in Human-Robot Interaction.

Transcript

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

HRI-Podcast-Episode-013-The-Good-Robot-Transcript

ISSN 2703-4054

Art in Human-Robot Interaction

What and how does art contribute to HRI?

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Many disciplines contribute to the success of human-robot interaction. Computer scientists and psychologist are amongst the most frequent contributors, but their contributions are not necessarily the most interesting ones. Today we are going to discuss what and how art can contribute to human-robot interaction. Robots have been used in the theater, exhibitions, comics and music, to name just a few. Getting them into the limelight does take various skills. Team work is often a challenge, but collaborating across disciplines adds a layer of complexity to the dynamics. I talked with Mari Velonaki, Guy Hoffman, and David St-Onge about art and its relationship to HRI.

Transcript

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

HRI-Podcast-Episode-006-Human-Robot-Interaction-Art-Transcript

ISSN 2703-4054

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Best Paper Award at the HRI2019 Conference

Tony Belpaeme won the best paper award at the HRI2019 conference.

Tony Belpaeme and his team won the Best Paper Award at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction 2019 for their paper “Second Language Tutoring using Social Robots:A Large-Scale Study“. You can download a free copy of the paper here.

The abstract of the paper is:

We present a large-scale study of a series of seven lessons designed to help young children learn English vocabulary as a foreign language using a social robot. The experiment was designed to investigate 1) the effectiveness of a social robot teaching children new words over the course of multiple interactions (supported by a tablet), 2) the added benefit of arobot’s iconic gestures on word learning and retention, and 3)the effect of learning from a robot tutor accompanied by a tablet versus learning from a tablet application alone. For reasons of transparency, the research questions, hypotheses and methods were preregistered. With a sample size of 194 children, our study was statistically well-powered. Our findings demonstrate that children are able to acquire and retain English vocabulary words taught by a robot tutor to a similar extent as when they are taught by a tablet application. In addition, we found no beneficial effect of a robot’s iconic gestures on learning gains.