Robots will play an important role in society. We need to ensure that robots are socially compatible with us in order for society to accept them. Research into the social aspects of human-robot interaction will enable engineers to constructs robots that successfully integrate into our everyday lives. This page summarizes my activities in the field of social robotics.
You may also want to have a look at the International Journal of Social Robotics and the Entertainment Robotics Section of the Entertainment Computing Journal. We are actively involved in these journals and are welcoming contributions.
Research
My research focuses on the social interaction between humans and robots. Therefore my work is closer to the field of artificial intelligence and psychology than electrical or mechanical engineering. You can contribute to the discussion about social robots at the Wikipedia. The following PhD students are or have been associated to this project:
Major projects are:
- Wordovators
- Development of reciprocity model for human-robot interaction
- Understanding Anthropomorphism and Animacy In The Interaction Between Users and Robots
- Robot Interaction Language (ROILA) – An artificial language optimized for easy learning and perfect speech recognition
- RoboDB – A semantic database of robots
Robots
For the various studies it was necessary to build robots or to adapt existing robots. We also have some professional photos of the iCat Robot and Nao vs. Aibo.
- Nao
- PaPeRo
- AdMoVeo
- Lego Beyond Toys (master course)
- eMuu (2002), An emotional robot that interacted with humans
- Tony (2003), A robot as an distributed inteface for time based media
- Emotional Adaptive Robots (2000), Two robotic creatures that competed in an environment for resources
Cooperations
Cooperation and teamwork with leading robotic institutes and researchers are essential for the success of robotic projects. Please contact me if you would be interested in a cooperation.
- NEC
- NZILBB
- Northwestern University
- ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, Robovie Project (IRC)
- Carnegie Mellon University, People and Robots Project
- Philips Research, iCat Project
- Philips Robocup Team
