United States

This work presents the improvements of Hydracer, a robot manipulator driven by electro-hydrostatic actuators, to achieve human-robot interaction. To solve the problems of Hydracer and to achieve flexible force control, we worked on the system improvements: reduction of internal leakage by considering oil property, enhancement of reliability of ceramics components, and the parameter identification to improve its controllability. Flexible force control of Hydracer by zero-torque control with gravity compensation was realized.


IEEE RO-MAN 2021

TIRL: Enriching Actor-Critic RL with non-expert human teachers\\ and a Trust Model

manipulator

hydraulic

**31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication**
 This conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.
 
 The conference covers a wide range of topics related to Robot and Human Interactive Communication, involving theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies. Papers related to the study of robotic technology, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, human factors, ethics and policies, interaction-based robot design and other topics related to human-robot interaction are welcome.
 
 **CONFERENCE THEME:**
 Social, asocial, and antisocial robots
 
 Robots are starting to populate our lives: at work, in our homes, hotels, shops. However, not everybody is comfortable with robots finding a place in society. For example, people may be afraid that robots will replace humans in their jobs. This belief is exacerbated by the media that, on one side, raise expectations of robots’ capabilities, while amplifying fears and worries on the other side.
 
 In the next years, due to the increasing request for interaction with people in social environments, academic research and market analyses predict that robots will become more and more “social”. But, at the same time, robots may incur the risk of being perceived as “asocial” as their pervasiveness in everyday environments may become an obstacle to social interaction between humans. Or they may even be rejected as “antisocial” if researchers do not take care to develop robots that behave according to the customs and habits of the communities where they are expected to operate.
 
 To prevent this from happening, robotic researchers can no longer take the luxury of being mere technicians. They must be capable of addressing all the challenges raised by future robot-populated communities in a multidisciplinary way. They need to share their knowledge with the public to make people aware of what robots really are, what expectations we can have from them, the risks we may incur, and the possible mitigation plans.
 
 While being open to any kind of contribution related to Human-Robot Interactive Communication, the RO-MAN 2022 conference will emphasize these aspects of robotic research. How can we create robots capable of being welcomed as our assistants and companions in society while, at the same time, not being perceived as “asocial” or “antisocial?” How can we create robots perceived as facilitators of the natural development of human beings and communities, rather than obstacles?
 
 Contributions from different disciplines, not exclusively related to technological development, will be welcomed as crucial to pave the way to global acceptance of future robots with an informed attitude.
 
 [![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/af259abe105b3791c498ae1552d75710.png)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18w73BZPB_JVOgcrcdZDqYpEupwVt4CnU/view?usp=sharing)

A registration is required to access this event page. If you have not already done so, please use the below link to register for the event. 

[Register Here](http://www.smile.unina.it/ro-man2022/welcome-to-ieee-ro-man-2022/)

Registration Is Required

IEEE RO-MAN 2022

31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication
This conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.

panel

RO-MAN 2021's theme is trustworthiness and cooperation. We chose this term well before the pandemic put the world on edge and added a new reason for us to question our own personal safety when in the company of others. But what about in the company of social robots? What would cause us to trust, or not trust, them? How do we as researchers create that feeling, that critical component of any relationship? With social robots, it is of course largely in our power to design the physical form, the control code and the interface software to maximize trustworthiness, facilitate cooperation and enhance the quality of human-robot interaction. This theme also touches upon people's expectations and perceptions of robots, as well as other social, cognitive and cultural factors that will influence human-robot interactions. We will have a special session/track on this topic, invite targeted submissions and include plenary speakers who are specialist in this area. We sincerely hope that this focus will help enlighten the design-thinking of all of us as we fabricate and program our own various systems.

To access RO-MAN Virtual 2021, [please register here.](https://ro-man2021.org/registration/)

RO-MAN 2021's theme is trustworthiness and cooperation. We chose this term well before the pandemic put the world on edge and added a new reason for us to question our own personal safety when in the company of others. But what about in the company of social robots? What would cause us to trust, or not trust, them? How do we as researchers create that feeling, that critical component of any relationship? With social robots, it is of course largely in our power to design the physical form, the control code and the interface software to maximize trustworthiness, facilitate cooperation and enhance the quality of human-robot interaction. 

With social robots entering the consumer market, there is a growing need to study
children's intention to adopt social robots in a domestic environment. Based on a
content analysis of data from 87 children, we found that hedonic beliefs, and
especially companionship from the robot, were the most mentioned beliefs for
domestic adoption of a social robot. Social beliefs were rarely mentioned. If children
mentioned beliefs for rejecting the robot, they often referred to family members and
family composition.

Exploring Children's Beliefs for Adoption or Rejection of Domestic Social Robots

Childhood ambulatory disorders affect physical, cognitive, and social development. We propose using a custom assistive robot for engaging children in early mobility interventions. Our first study showed that during driving interventions, children looked at the robot more while it was active, but other results were mixed. In our second study on ambulatory free play, children looked at and engaged with the robot more when it was active. This research is a first step in developing robots for early mobility interventions.

Design of an Assistive Robot for Infant Mobility Interventions

As autonomous collaborative robots are more widely used in work environments alongside humans it is of great importance to facilitate the communication between people and robotic systems, in a way that promotes safety and productivity. To this end, we propose an Augmented Reality (AR) based system that allows workers in a human-robot collaborative environment to interact with a robot while also receiving information regarding the robot state and plans that relate to the human’s safety and trust.

Intuitive and Safe Interaction in Multi-User Human Robot Collaboration Environments through Augmented Reality Displays

In this work, we present a framework for human-robot collaboration allowing the human operator to alter the robot plan execution online. To achieve this goal, we introduce branched AND/OR graphs, an extension to AND/OR graphs, to manage flexible and adaptable human-robot collaboration. In our study, the operator can alter the plan execution using two implementations of Branched AND/OR graphs for learning by demonstration, using kinesthetic teaching, and task repetition. Finally, we demonstrated the effectiveness of our framework in a defect spotting scenario where the operator supervises robot operations and modifies online the plan when necessary.

Branched AND/OR Graphs: Toward Flexible and Adaptable Human-Robot Collaboration

This paper proposes a novel dynamic method based on Behavior Trees that integrates planning and allocation of tasks in mixed human robot teams, suitable for manufacturing environments. The Behavior Tree formulation allows encoding a single job as a compound of different tasks with temporal constraints. The role allocation problem is solved with multiple simplified online optimization sub-problems. These sub-problems are defined as Mixed-Integer Linear Programs, that, according to the worker-actions related costs and the workers' availability, allocate the yet-to-execute tasks among the available workers.

Older Adults’ Opinion on Social Robot as Companion

This study investigates if and how college students cheat while engaged in a collaborative sorting task with a robot. Our study finds that prior exposure to cheating on the task significantly increases the likelihood of cheating. Yet, the tendency to cheat is not impacted by the clarity of the task rules.

Impact of Human Gaze Behavior and Robot Appearance on Motion Uncertainty During Cooperative Hand Movement Tasks

The contributions, of our study are: a) the comparison of a human vs a robot-tutor in terms of the students’ level of understanding from the course (knowledge acquisition) and opinions about the use of robots in the educational field, b) an analysis of how the exposure of pre-service teachers in a robot-tutor and Computational thinking course affects their robot-related attitudes. c) We investigate the differences in attitudes and understanding from the course between students, after having ten weeks of basically Computational thinking lessons, who have one or two lectures with a robot-tutor.

Interactive Robotic Systems as Boundary-Crossing Robots – the User’s View

Gamified rehabilitation tackles the problem of keeping patients engaged in, and motivated to do physical rehabilitation to improve its efficacy. However, with respect to standard rehabilitation, patients are freer to move about and may compensate their motion difficulties with parasite movements, which would greatly reduce the efficacy of the rehabilitation. To identify and characterize compensatory motions, we collected and analyzed video data of people playing the“tangible Pacman” game (an upper-limb rehabilitation game in which a patient moves a semi-passive robot, the “Pacman”, on a map to collect 6 apples, while being chased by one or two autonomous robots, the “ghosts”). Participants include 10healthy elderly adults and 10 chronic stroke patients, who played multiple runs of the game, with different-sized maps and various game configurations. By analyzing the video recordings we successfully identified higher shoulder and torso lateral tilt compensation in stroke patients and developed a proof-of-concept compensatory motion detection system that relies on a wearable Inertial Measurement Unit and ROS to provide in-game, real-time visual feedback on compensation.

Detecting Compensatory Motions and Providing Informative Feedback During a Tangible Robot Assisted Game for Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

In this work, we designed a teachable robot that encourages a pair of students to discuss their thoughts and teaching decisions during the tutoring session. The robot adapts to the students' talking activity. The results of our user study (n = 68) showed that the adaptive robot was successful in creating more dialogue between dyad members and in increasing task engagement. Over time, the adaptive robot was also able to encourage both members to contribute more equally to the conversation.

A Model for the Representation of the Extraversion-Introversion Personality Traits in the Communication Style of a Social Robot

We implemented a dedicated human-aware navigation system that adapts the configuration of the navigation parameters based on two human-like personalities, extrovert and introvert, and we compared them with a no social behavior. We evaluated the system in a dynamic scenario in which each participant needed to pass by a robot moving in the opposite direction, showing a different personality each time. The results show that 19 out of 20 subjects involved in the study perceived a difference among the personalities exhibited by the robot, both in terms of proxemics and velocity. Furthermore, the results highlight a general preference of a complementary robot’s personality, helping to suggest some guidelines for future works in the human-aware navigation field.

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TIRL: Enriching Actor-Critic RL with non-expert human teachers\\ and a Trust Model

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