Why do you think ethics is an important topic for AI and robotics?

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Jun 17, 2019 in Research | 0 comments

Erich Prem interviewed me in Singapore during our book sprint on the role of ethics in robotics and artificial intelligence.

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LEGO Brick Dimensions and Measurements

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Apr 21, 2019 in Uncategorized | 6 comments

The LEGO bricks are precisely designed to fit perfectly together. There is a 0.2mm gap between bricks next to each other. The gap between two bricks stacked on top of each depends on how careful to pressed them down. Of course there are several websites that show you the exact measurements, but some of them were a bit confusing or even broken.

LEGO 2×4 Brick (3001)

I enjoy working in 3D so I used Fusion 360 to create this technical drawing of the LEGO Brick. You can download the model over at GrabCAD and the PDF file from here.

lego-2×4-brick-dimensions-measurements-3001

LEGO 2×4 Plate (3020)

This plate is 1/3 of the height of a normal brick. You can download the model at GrabCAD and the the PDF file from here.

lego-2×4-plate-dimensions-measurements-3020

LEGO 1×4 Technic Brick (3701)

The technic bricks have a hole in the side for pin connectors or axles to go through. I had to cut open a brick to get the exact design of the inside tubes right. The model is available at GrabCAD and the PDF file from here.

lego-1×4-technic-brick-dimensions-measurements-3701

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How religious is Christchurch?

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Apr 17, 2019 in Culture, Documentation, Research | 0 comments

While driving around Christchurch I noticed a church on almost every corner. The name of the city could have already given me that hint, but it is better to check the facts first before jumping to conclusions. Christchurch was named after the Christ Church College at Oxford University.

There does not seem to be any register for churches in New Zealand and hence I searched the Charities Register for charities that provide religious services. The results contain more than 7000 charities, but many of them are no longer registered and/or have stopped operation. After some cleaning of the data I was left with 5590 records for New Zealand. It is important to note that not every religious charity is a church and not all churches are registered as a charity. One charity could also operate several churches. But for what it is worth, this approach does seem like a good approximation. The various Anglican parishes, for example, are listed individually.

Mapping these religious charities on a map would be slightly misleading since bigger cities will naturally have a higher number of charities. To create a density map of the religious charities in New Zealand I had to take the population distribution into account.

InfoShare from StatsNZ allows you to download the download the Estimated Resident Population for Urban Areas. It contains population estimates for many of New Zealand’s cities. Unfortunately, this list does not contain all the small cities, such as Akaroa.

After cross referencing the charities with the population information I created this density map of religious charities in New Zealand. Christchurch has 517 registered religious charities and a population of 404,600 in 2018 which results in 0.0012 people per charity. This puts Christchurch in the lower half.

You can have a look at the full visualization over at Tableau Public where you can also download the source data.

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The Federal Trade Commission fined OMICS Group 50.1 million

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Apr 5, 2019 in Research | 0 comments

It took some time, but it seems like my little sting against the OMICS group finally paid off. I had used the iOS autocomplete function to create a fake paper for one of their conferences which was accepted for publication after only three hours. I had brought my case forward to the trade commission and they now fined OMICS group. This is good news for the scientific community and I hope that this will reduce the number of predatory journals and conferences.

Here is some of the news coverage:

• Predatory Publisher Fined $50 Million After Scamming Thousands of Scientists
• Predatory Publisher Fined $50 Million After Scamming Thousands of Scientists
• FTC hits predatory scientific publisher with a $50 million fine
• The Price for ‘Predatory’ Publishing? $50 Million

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Draft Proposal for a Memorial Exhibit about the Christchurch Mosque Tragedy At the Christchurch Brick Show 2019

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Mar 25, 2019 in Culture, Featured, LEGO | 0 comments

On Friday March 15th 2019 New Zealand experienced its biggest terrorist attack in Christchurch that took the lives of 50 people. The loss to their families and their community is indescribable. It is our responsibility to pay respect to the victims, their families and their communities. Moreover, we must take action to prevent that such an event will ever happen again.

For this purpose we propose to build a memorial exhibit for the Christchurch Brick Show. The exhibit will consist of two parts.

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Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale (NARS) Translations

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Mar 11, 2019 in Documentation, Research | 0 comments

Several people asked about translations to the original NARS questionnaire. I finally got around to put them together below. The questionnaire was used in our paper:

Bartneck, C., Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Suzuki, T., & Kennsuke, K. (2005). A cross-cultural study on attitudes towards robots. Proceedings of the HCI International, Las Vegas.

Japanese

ロボットに対する気持ちに関して、18個の文章が以下に書かれています。
それぞれの文書に対して、「全くそう思わない」、「それほどでもない」、「どちらともいえない」、
「まあそうだ」、「全くそう思う」のいずれかにチェックを付けて下さい。
正しい答，又は間違った答はありません。
幾つかの文章は他の文章と似通っています。そのことに関して気にしないでください。
時間をかけずに，第一印象で答えてください。

1. もしロボットが本当に感情を持ったら不安だ。
2. ロボットが生き物に近づくと、人間にとってよくないことがありそうな気がする。
3. ロボットと会話すると、とてもリラックスできるだろう。
4. 就職してロボットを利用するような職場にまわされるかもしれないと考えると、不安になる。
5. ロボットが感情を持ったら、親しくなれるだろう。
6. 感情的な動きをするロボットを見ると、気分がいやされる。
7. ロボットと聞いただけで、もうお手上げの気持ちだ。
8. 人が見ている前でロボットを利用すると、恥をかきそうだ。
9. 人工知能とか、ロボットによる判断といった言葉を聞くと不愉快になる。
10. 私は、ロボットの前に立っただけで、とても緊張してしまうだろう。
11. ロボットに頼りすぎると、将来、何か良くないことが起こりそうな気がする。
12. ロボットと会話をすると、とても神経過敏になるだろう。
13. ロボットが子供の心に悪い影響を与えないか心配だ。
14. これからの社会は、ロボットによって支配されてしまいそうな気がする。

German

Ihnen werden im Folgenden 14 Aussagen präsentiert, die Ihre Einstellung zu Robotern beschreibt. Bitte beurteilen Sie diese Sätze auf einer Skala von “Ich stimme vollständig zu” bis “Ich stimme nicht zu”. Es gibt keine richtige oder falsche Antwort, antworten Sie bitte spontan nach Ihrem ersten Eindruck.

1. Ich würde mich unwohl fühlen, wenn Roboter wirkliche Gefühle hätten.
2. Etwas Schlimmes könnte passieren, wenn sich Roboter in lebendige Wesen entwickeln würden.
3. Ich würde mich entspannt fühlen ,wenn ich mit einem Roboter spräche.
4. Ich würde mich unwohl fühlen, wenn ich einen Arbeitsplatz bekäme, an dem ich mit Robotern zusammenarbeiten müsste.
5. Wenn Roboter Gefühle hätten, könnte ich mit Ihnen anfreunden.
6. Ich fühle mich in Gegenwart von Robotern umsorgt.
7. Das Wort “Roboter” hat keine Bedeutung für mich.
8. Es würde mich nervös machen einen Roboter in Gegenwart von anderen zu bedienen.
9. Ich würde es hassen wenn Roboter oder Künstliche Intelligenz Dinge beurteilen würden.
10. Ich wäre bereits sehr nervös, wenn ich einfach nur vor einem Roboter stände.
11. Ich glaube dass etwas Schlimmes passieren könnte, wenn ich zu sehr von Robotern abhängig wäre.
12. Ich würde mich paranoid fühlen, wenn ich mit einem Roboter spräche.
13. Ich bin besorgt, dass Roboter einen schlechten Einfluss auf Kinder haben könnten.
14. Ich glaube, dass unsere Gesellschaft in Zukunft von Robotern dominiert wird.

English

In the following 14 sentences (statements) are presented to you, which describe your attitude towards robots. Please judge these sentences on scale from “I agree completely” to “I completely disagree”. There are no right or wrong answers, please answer spontaneously upon your first impression.

1. I feel uneasy if a robot really has an emotion.
2. Something horrible would happen, if a robot would evolve into living beings.
3. I will be able to relax while talking to a robot.
4. I would feel uncomfortable, coming to a working space, which would require me to work with a robot.
5. If robots had feelings, I could become friends with them.
6. I feel cared for in the presence of robots.
7. The word “robot” does not have a meaning for me.
8. I would feel nervous operating a robot in the presence of others.
9. I would hate it, if robots or articial intelligence would judge things.
10. I would already be nervous, just standing in front of a robots.
11. I believe that something bad could happen, if I would be too dependent on robots
12. I would feel paranoid, if I would talk to a computer
13. I am worried, that robots could have a bad influence on my children.
14. I believe, that our society will be dominated by robots in the future.

Chinese

您将看到14个句子，分别表述了对机器人的各种态度和看法。请您判断是否同意有关说法，同意的程度可以从“非常同意”到“非常不同意”。请注意没有所谓正确或错误的答案，您不必思考太长的时间，只要给出您的第一印象就可以了。

1. 面对一个真的有情感的机器人，我会觉得不自在。
2. 如果机器人进化成有生命的生物，后果可能不妙。
3. 和机器人交谈我会觉得很放松。
4. 如果我必须使用机器人来完成给定的工作，我会觉得不自在。
5. 如果机器人有情感, 我会和它们交朋友。
6. 和有情感的机器人在一起我会觉得很轻松自在。
7. “机器人”这个词本身对我来说就涵义不清。
8. 在别人面前操作机器人我会觉得紧张。
9. 我讨厌由机器人或者人工智能对事物进行判断的想法。
10. 仅仅站在机器人的跟前就会让我很紧张。
11. 我觉得如果我过分依赖机器人，后果可能不妙。
12. 和机器人交谈我觉得有些神经。
13. 我担心机器人会对小孩有不好的影响。
14. 我觉得可能将来的社会会被机器人所控制。

French

La feuille ci-après décrit 14 attitudes susceptibles d’être ressenties
par un être humain au contact d’un robot. Pour chaque attitude, veuillez choisir l’appréciation qui vous convient le plus: l’échelle va de ‘Totalement d’accord’ à ‘Je ne suis pas du tout d’accord’ Il n’y a pas de fausse réponse, veuillez seulement donner votre première impression, sans trop vous attarder sur chaque question.

1. Cela me gênerait si les robots pouvaient avoir des émotions
2. Si les robots devenaient des êtres vivants à part entière, cela pourrait avoir de graves conséquence
3. Je me sentirais à l’aise en discutant avec un robot
4. J’accepterais difficilement de travailler dans un environnement où j’aurais à coopérer avec des robots
5. Si les robots pouvaient avoir des émotions, je pourrais nouer des relations amicales avec eux.
6. Je pourrais être réconforté(e) par un robot ayant des émotions.
7. Le mot robot ne représente rien à mes yeux
8. L’idée de manipuler un robot devant d’autres personnes me rend nerveux(se)
9. Je ne supporterais pas qu’un robot ou une intelligence artificielle puisse émettre un quelconque jugement.
10. La simple idée de me retrouver face à robot me rend nerveux(se)
11. J’ai l’impression qu’il pourrait m’arriver quelque chose de grave si je devenais trop dépendant des robots.
12. Parler avec un robot me rendrait paranoïde.
13. Je suis préoccupé par la mauvaise influence que pourraient avoir les robots sur les enfants.
14. Je pense que la société de demain sera dominée par les robots.

Spanish

A continuación Usted leerá 14 frases que describen actitudes frente a robots. Por favor, juzgue las frases dentro del rango “Completamente de acuerdo” a “Completamente en desacuerdo”. Ninguna respuesta es incorrecta, por lo que se le pide entregar su primera impresión lo más immediato posible.

1. Me sentiría incómodo(a) si los robots tuvieran emociones.
2. Algo malo podría ocurrir si los robots se convirtieran en seres vivientes.
3. Me sentiría tranquilo(a) conversando con robots.
4. Me sentiría incómodo(a) si obtengo un trabajo donde tuviera que usar robots.
5. Si los robots tuvieran emociones yo podría hacer amistad con ellos.
6. Es reconfortante el compartir con robots que tienen emociones.
7. La palabra “robot” no significa nada para mí.
8. Me sentiría nervioso(a) tener que manejar un robot en frente a otras personas.
9. Odiaría la idea de que robots e inteligencia artificial realizaran juicios acerca de cosas.
10. Me sentiría muy nervioso(a) con el sólo hecho de estar en frente a un robot.
11. Siento que si dependo mucho de los robots algo malo podría ocurrir.
12. Me sentiría paranoico(a) hablando con un robot.
13. Estoy conciente que los robots podrían ejercer una mala influencia en los niños.
14. Siento que nuestra sociedad en el futuro va a estar dominada por robots.

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Human-Robot Interaction Podcast

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Mar 11, 2019 in Project, Research | 0 comments

I started a new podcast series on Human-Robot Interaction. Have a look at the website to follow the latest episodes. I interview experts in the field and discuss technical, ethical and psychological issues around HRI.

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