A robust perception system is crucial for natural human–robot interaction. An essential capabilit... more A robust perception system is crucial for natural human–robot interaction. An essential capability of these systems is to provide a rich representation of the robot’s environment, typically using multiple sensory sources. Moreover, this information allows the robot to react to both external stimuli and user responses. The novel contribution of this paper is the development of a perception architecture, which was based on the bio-inspired concept of endogenous attention being integrated into a real social robot. In this paper, the architecture is defined at a theoretical level to provide insights into the underlying bio-inspired mechanisms and at a practical level to integrate and test the architecture within the complete architecture of a robot. We also defined mechanisms to establish the most salient stimulus for the detection or task in question. Furthermore, the attention-based architecture uses information from the robot’s decision-making system to produce user responses and rob...
Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2017
Perceiving when, where and how a robot is touched is an important aspect towards a natural Human-... more Perceiving when, where and how a robot is touched is an important aspect towards a natural Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). To date, several technologies are used in Social Robotics to determine the area where a touch is performed, in some cases using many sensors. Moreover, most approaches do not tackle the kind of touch performed. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique based on audio analysis, and machine learning techniques. This presents a proof of concept aimed to provide some advantages regarding the state-of-the-art touch technologies for HRI: cost-efficiency since only a few microphones can cover the robot shell completely; robustness as microphones are not affected by electromagnetic interference or by external sounds; and accuracy taking into account the preliminary results.
In this paper a decision making system for autonomous and social agents who live in a virtual wor... more In this paper a decision making system for autonomous and social agents who live in a virtual world is presented. This world was built using a text based multi-user game: a MUD (Multi User Domain). In this world the agents can interact with one other, allowing social interaction, as well as interaction with the other objects present in the world. In this paper, the usefulness of using this kind of text based multiuser games as test beds for designing decision making systems of artificial agents, is proved. The proposed decision making system is composed of several subsystems: a motivational system, a drives system and an evaluation and behaviour selection system. The selection of behaviours is learned by the agent using reinforcement learning algorithms. The dominant motivation is considered as the inner state of the agent. In order to simplify the learning process, the states related to the objects are considered as independent from one another. The state of the agent is a combinat...
Adapting to dynamic environments is essential for artificial agents, especially those aiming to c... more Adapting to dynamic environments is essential for artificial agents, especially those aiming to communicate with people interactively. In this context, a social robot that adapts its behaviour to different users and proactively suggests their favourite activities may produce a more successful interaction. In this work, we describe how the autonomous decision-making system embedded in our social robot Mini can produce a personalised interactive communication experience by considering the preferences of the user the robot interacts with. We compared the performance of Top Label as Class and Ranking by Pairwise Comparison, two promising algorithms in the area, to find the one that best predicts the user preferences. Although both algorithms provide robust results in preference prediction, we decided to integrate Ranking by Pairwise Comparison since it provides better estimations. The method proposed in this contribution allows the autonomous decision-making system of the robot to work ...
The success of social robots is mainly based on their capacity for interaction with people. In th... more The success of social robots is mainly based on their capacity for interaction with people. In this regard, verbal and non-verbal communication skills are essential for social robots to get a natural human-robot interaction. This paper focuses on the first of them since the majority of social robots implement a Text to Speech system. We present a comparative study of 8 off-the-shelf systems used in social robots where 125 participants evaluated the performance of the systems. The results show that, in general, the participants detect differences between the Text to Speech systems, being able to determine which are the more intelligible, expressive, and artificial ones. Besides, the participants also conclude that there are some systems more suitable than others depending on the physical appearance of the robots.
Travellers use the term waymarking to define the action of posting signs, or waymarks, along a ro... more Travellers use the term waymarking to define the action of posting signs, or waymarks, along a route. These marks are intended to be points of reference during navigation for the environment. In this research, we will define waymarking as the skill of a robot to signal the environment or generate information to facilitate localization and navigation, both for its own use and for other robots as well. We present an automated environment signaling system using human–robot interaction and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The goal is for the robot, through human–robot interaction, to obtain information from the environment and use this information to carry out the signaling or waymarking process. HRI will play a key role in the signaling process since this type of communication makes it possible to exchange more specific and enriching information. The robot uses common phrases such as “Where am I?” and “Where can I go?”, just as we humans do when we ask other people for...
With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot i... more With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot interaction has become apparent. Emotions will play an important role in this interaction. In the proposed architecture emotions are generated from the evaluation of the wellbeing of the robot. Moreover, behavior selection mainly depends on a specific drive and emotions have a supervisory role. Proposed Architecture The goal of our research is to construct autonomous personal robots. These robots are being built on mobile platforms (iRobot Magellan Pro), on which various sensors (laser, sonar and camera) and devices are installed. These sensors and devices will make possible the interaction of the robot with its environment and users.
With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot i... more With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot interaction has become apparent. Emotions will play an important role in this interaction. In the proposed architecture emotions are generated from the evaluation of the wellbeing of the robot. Moreover, behavior selection mainly depends on a specific drive and emotions have a supervisory role. Proposed Architecture The goal of our research is to construct autonomous personal robots. These robots are being built on mobile platforms (iRobot Magellan Pro), on which various sensors (laser, sonar and camera) and devices are installed. These sensors and devices will make possible the interaction of the robot with its environment and users.
This paper introduces a proposal for integrating personal assistant robots with social capacities... more This paper introduces a proposal for integrating personal assistant robots with social capacities in smart environments. The personal robot will be a fundamental element for the detection and healthy regulation of the affect of the environment’s inhabitants. A full description of the main features of the proposed personal assistant robot are introduced. Also, the multi-modal emotion detection and emotion regulation modules are fully described. Machine learning techniques are employed for emotion recognition from voice and images and both outputs are merged to achieve the detected emotion.
This paper presents a new control system based on reactive skills which allows a mobile robot to ... more This paper presents a new control system based on reactive skills which allows a mobile robot to carry out its tasks safely. This control system is based on the human beings actuation capacity. The control system is formed by skills, which include the robot’s perception and action capacities, and reflex actions, which allow the robot to respond with priority to a specific stimulus. A skill can generate its own events and notify them to other skills previously registered at it in order to receive notification. In order to increase the robots actuation capacity, it must exhibit a variety of different behaviors. For this, three different methods for generating complex skills from simple ones are also proposed.
A robust perception system is crucial for natural human–robot interaction. An essential capabilit... more A robust perception system is crucial for natural human–robot interaction. An essential capability of these systems is to provide a rich representation of the robot’s environment, typically using multiple sensory sources. Moreover, this information allows the robot to react to both external stimuli and user responses. The novel contribution of this paper is the development of a perception architecture, which was based on the bio-inspired concept of endogenous attention being integrated into a real social robot. In this paper, the architecture is defined at a theoretical level to provide insights into the underlying bio-inspired mechanisms and at a practical level to integrate and test the architecture within the complete architecture of a robot. We also defined mechanisms to establish the most salient stimulus for the detection or task in question. Furthermore, the attention-based architecture uses information from the robot’s decision-making system to produce user responses and rob...
Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2017
Perceiving when, where and how a robot is touched is an important aspect towards a natural Human-... more Perceiving when, where and how a robot is touched is an important aspect towards a natural Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). To date, several technologies are used in Social Robotics to determine the area where a touch is performed, in some cases using many sensors. Moreover, most approaches do not tackle the kind of touch performed. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique based on audio analysis, and machine learning techniques. This presents a proof of concept aimed to provide some advantages regarding the state-of-the-art touch technologies for HRI: cost-efficiency since only a few microphones can cover the robot shell completely; robustness as microphones are not affected by electromagnetic interference or by external sounds; and accuracy taking into account the preliminary results.
In this paper a decision making system for autonomous and social agents who live in a virtual wor... more In this paper a decision making system for autonomous and social agents who live in a virtual world is presented. This world was built using a text based multi-user game: a MUD (Multi User Domain). In this world the agents can interact with one other, allowing social interaction, as well as interaction with the other objects present in the world. In this paper, the usefulness of using this kind of text based multiuser games as test beds for designing decision making systems of artificial agents, is proved. The proposed decision making system is composed of several subsystems: a motivational system, a drives system and an evaluation and behaviour selection system. The selection of behaviours is learned by the agent using reinforcement learning algorithms. The dominant motivation is considered as the inner state of the agent. In order to simplify the learning process, the states related to the objects are considered as independent from one another. The state of the agent is a combinat...
Adapting to dynamic environments is essential for artificial agents, especially those aiming to c... more Adapting to dynamic environments is essential for artificial agents, especially those aiming to communicate with people interactively. In this context, a social robot that adapts its behaviour to different users and proactively suggests their favourite activities may produce a more successful interaction. In this work, we describe how the autonomous decision-making system embedded in our social robot Mini can produce a personalised interactive communication experience by considering the preferences of the user the robot interacts with. We compared the performance of Top Label as Class and Ranking by Pairwise Comparison, two promising algorithms in the area, to find the one that best predicts the user preferences. Although both algorithms provide robust results in preference prediction, we decided to integrate Ranking by Pairwise Comparison since it provides better estimations. The method proposed in this contribution allows the autonomous decision-making system of the robot to work ...
The success of social robots is mainly based on their capacity for interaction with people. In th... more The success of social robots is mainly based on their capacity for interaction with people. In this regard, verbal and non-verbal communication skills are essential for social robots to get a natural human-robot interaction. This paper focuses on the first of them since the majority of social robots implement a Text to Speech system. We present a comparative study of 8 off-the-shelf systems used in social robots where 125 participants evaluated the performance of the systems. The results show that, in general, the participants detect differences between the Text to Speech systems, being able to determine which are the more intelligible, expressive, and artificial ones. Besides, the participants also conclude that there are some systems more suitable than others depending on the physical appearance of the robots.
Travellers use the term waymarking to define the action of posting signs, or waymarks, along a ro... more Travellers use the term waymarking to define the action of posting signs, or waymarks, along a route. These marks are intended to be points of reference during navigation for the environment. In this research, we will define waymarking as the skill of a robot to signal the environment or generate information to facilitate localization and navigation, both for its own use and for other robots as well. We present an automated environment signaling system using human–robot interaction and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The goal is for the robot, through human–robot interaction, to obtain information from the environment and use this information to carry out the signaling or waymarking process. HRI will play a key role in the signaling process since this type of communication makes it possible to exchange more specific and enriching information. The robot uses common phrases such as “Where am I?” and “Where can I go?”, just as we humans do when we ask other people for...
With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot i... more With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot interaction has become apparent. Emotions will play an important role in this interaction. In the proposed architecture emotions are generated from the evaluation of the wellbeing of the robot. Moreover, behavior selection mainly depends on a specific drive and emotions have a supervisory role. Proposed Architecture The goal of our research is to construct autonomous personal robots. These robots are being built on mobile platforms (iRobot Magellan Pro), on which various sensors (laser, sonar and camera) and devices are installed. These sensors and devices will make possible the interaction of the robot with its environment and users.
With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot i... more With the emergence of personal robots recently the need to create an easier form of human-robot interaction has become apparent. Emotions will play an important role in this interaction. In the proposed architecture emotions are generated from the evaluation of the wellbeing of the robot. Moreover, behavior selection mainly depends on a specific drive and emotions have a supervisory role. Proposed Architecture The goal of our research is to construct autonomous personal robots. These robots are being built on mobile platforms (iRobot Magellan Pro), on which various sensors (laser, sonar and camera) and devices are installed. These sensors and devices will make possible the interaction of the robot with its environment and users.
This paper introduces a proposal for integrating personal assistant robots with social capacities... more This paper introduces a proposal for integrating personal assistant robots with social capacities in smart environments. The personal robot will be a fundamental element for the detection and healthy regulation of the affect of the environment’s inhabitants. A full description of the main features of the proposed personal assistant robot are introduced. Also, the multi-modal emotion detection and emotion regulation modules are fully described. Machine learning techniques are employed for emotion recognition from voice and images and both outputs are merged to achieve the detected emotion.
This paper presents a new control system based on reactive skills which allows a mobile robot to ... more This paper presents a new control system based on reactive skills which allows a mobile robot to carry out its tasks safely. This control system is based on the human beings actuation capacity. The control system is formed by skills, which include the robot’s perception and action capacities, and reflex actions, which allow the robot to respond with priority to a specific stimulus. A skill can generate its own events and notify them to other skills previously registered at it in order to receive notification. In order to increase the robots actuation capacity, it must exhibit a variety of different behaviors. For this, three different methods for generating complex skills from simple ones are also proposed.
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