New Podcast Episode: The Story Of Boston Dynamics

From military robots to beer commercials.

A new episode of the Human-Robot Interaction Podcast is available:

The Story Of Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics is the rock star of robotics. It recently featured in a beer commercial during the Super Bowl. How did a company that started as a military contractor become a novelty in beer commercials? Dwain Allan and Christoph Bartneck discuss the past, present and future of the company with Robert Cheek and Stephen Hickson.

Google Scholar Metrics for HCI and HRI

Google introduced a new feature. You can now look at the ranking of publication venues by discipline and sub-discipline. The HRI conference is listed at place 9 in the robotics area. The CHI conference is on top in the human-computer interaction ranking. In both disciplines, Google has a problem with “Interaction”, since it declares them to be “Unteraction”. The journal “Human-Computer Interaction” is also not listed. I am not sure if this is due to a lack of h-index or due to some other reason.