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Current study developed robot version of widely adopted test of affective ToM, Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) using a social robot, Vector. In this preliminary study, the performance toward the expressions of same ethnicity (RMET-K) predicts the performance on the robot expression (RMET-R).

IEEE RO-MAN 2021

A Preliminary Study on Reading the Mind in the Eyes of the Robot

individual variance

affective theory of mind

human robot interaction

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. 

panel

With increased interest in close-proximity human-robot collaboration in production settings it is important that we understand how robot behaviors and mistakes affect human-robot trust. We designed a system for real-time human-robot trust assessment using a top-down depth camera tracking setup with the goal of using signs of physical apprehension to infer decreases in trust toward the robot. In an experiment with 20 participants we evaluated the tracking system in a repetitive collaborative pick-and-place task with a Rethink Robotics Sawyer robot.

Interviewing Style for a Social Robot

This paper presents a new concept of
supplementary arms for the collaborative task with a worker
during a thin panel installation on the wall. Foldable robot arms
for holding and installation (FRAHI) using scissor structure
have been proposed as a new concept of the human-robot
collaboration. The foldable and wearable FRAHI arm has been
designed to influence cooperativeness and worker safety. FRAHI
arms are developed and integrated with a worker's safety suit,
and a soft and flexible waist belt is introduced for the arms and
worker interface, comfortable to the user while working. The
design principle of FRAHI is based on folding capability, gravity
compensation for the cooperative thin-panel installation with
workers. The experimental demonstration of a thin panel
installation on the wall has been performed for the feasibility of
the supplementary arm for worker assistance and
cooperativeness in construction works.

Exploring Human attitude during Human-Robot Interaction

Robots create a window of opportunity to challenge the barriers to play that children with special needs face. We created a new robot, MyJay, to address this need and involved various stakeholders in the project.

Design, development, and preliminary evaluation of a highly wearable

We address the Object Goal Navigation problem, which tasks the agent with searching an instance of a goal category. Rather than developing goal-driven exploration policies, we aim to adapt the existing exploration policies that maximize scene coverage to be goal-conditioned. Thus, we propose a standalone scene understanding module to identify potential regions where the goal occurs. We also propose Goal-Conditioned Exploration (GCExp), an algorithm that entails the integration of our novel scene understanding module with any existing exploration policy.

How Can a Robot Trigger Human Backchanneling?

3D avatars are widely used in various fields of emerging technology, from augmented reality to social robots. To interact in a natural way with the user, they must be able to show at least some basic emotions. However, generating animation for these virtual avatars is a time-consuming task and a creative process. The main goal of this work is to facilitate a generation of facial animation of basic emotions on a 3D avatar. To this end, we developed and compared two approaches. The first method consists of the generation of animation using tuning Blendshape features of the 3D model, whereas the second method captures it from the real face and maps it on the model correspondingly. Additionally, the text, from which the emotion was estimated, was passed to lip synchronization software for generating realistic lip movements for the avatar. Then, animations of six basic emotions were shown in different variations in the survey and respondents were asked to guess the emotion shown in the video. Besides, such anthropomorphic features of the avatar as human-likeness, life-likeness and pleasantness were examined. In general, the analysis of the survey provided the following interesting findings: a) participants did not have significant differences in recognizing emotions based on the type of animation generation method; b) inclusion of voice significantly enhanced the recognition of emotion. In relation to participants' accuracy of emotion recognition, Excitement and Happiness were mostly confused between each other more than any other two emotions, while Anger was the easiest emotion to recognize.


Facial Expression Generation of 3D Avatar Based on Semantic Analysis

This work proposes a path re-planning strategy combined with a speed scaling technique for human-robot collaboration. The re-planning algorithm exploits a set of pre-computed paths to find a new path when the current one is obstructed by the operator, or to optimize the current trajectory otherwise. The re-planner allows reducing the need for speed reductions and safety stops. Compared to the common three-fixed-areas speed and separation monitoring approach, it offers a safe, more efficient, and natural collaboration.

Hatsuki: An anime character like robot figure platform with anime-style expressions and imitation learning based action generation

This work proposes a modular system for agile production using a marker less camera-based system using real-time joint position estimations as input and providing a continuous or summarized individual ergonomic feedback as output. First implementation results considering the requirements and overall system design for online ergonomic evaluation in agile production environment are discussed.

Modular System Design Approach for Online Ergonomics Assessment in Agile Production Environment

For an effective deployment in manufacturing,
Collaborative Robots should be capable of adapting their
behavior to the state of the environment and to keep the user
safe and engaged during the interaction. Artificial Intelligence
(AI) enables robots to autonomously operate understanding
the environment, planning their tasks and acting to achieve
some given goals. However, the effective deployment of AI technologies
in real industrial environments is not straightforward.
There is a need for engineering tools facilitating communication
and interaction between AI engineers and Domain experts. This
paper proposes a novel software tool, called TENANT (Tool
fostEriNg Ai plaNning in roboTics) whose aim is to facilitate
the use of AI planning technologies by providing domain
experts like e.g., production engineers, with a graphical software
framework to synthesize AI planning models abstracting from
syntactic features of the underlying planning formalism.

Artistic Style in Robotic Painting: A Machine Learning Approach to Learning Brushstrokes from Human Artists

We address a task allocation problem for human multi-robot settings. Given a set of tasks to perform, we formulate a general Mixed-Integer Linear Programming problem aiming at minimizing the overall execution time while optimizing the quality of the executed tasks as well as human and robotic workload. Different skills of the agents are taken into account and human operators are enabled to either directly execute tasks or play supervisory roles; moreover, multiple manipulators can tightly collaborate if required to carry out a task. Finally, as realistic in human contexts, human parameters are assumed to vary over time, e.g., due to increasing human level of fatigue. Therefore, online monitoring is required and re-allocation is performed if needed.

A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming Formulation for Human Multi-Robot Task Allocation

The key contribution of this work is to incorporate natural human motion for controlling Soft Robotic Manipulators (SRMs). We accomplish this via user input modalities that translate motion in the human coordinate system to the SRM end-effector. For that, we present two Human-Robot Interfaces (HRI) and conduct user studies on an SRM in object handling tasks and assess the performance of teleoperators using a spatial input device (Geomagic Touch) and an augmented reality-based input device (HTC Vive). 


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A Preliminary Study on Reading the Mind in the Eyes of the Robot

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