Category: Research

Vacancy: PhD position on Robots in the Metaverse

The Department of Industrial Design of the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e) has the following vacancy (code V51.062):

Project Description

The Metaverse (global standards among real and virtual worlds) project will provide a standardized global framework that enables the interoperability between virtual worlds (as for example Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU, Google Earth and many others) and the real world (robots, sensors, actuators, vision and rendering, social and welfare systems, banking, insurance, travel, real estate and many others). The project is a funded through the European ITEA organization and the Dutch SenterNovem organization. Continue reading “Vacancy: PhD position on Robots in the Metaverse”

CFP: New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction

A two-day symposium at AISB 2009 (8-9 April 2009), Edinburgh, Scotland
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd/HRI-AISB2009-Symposium.html

Held during the Science Festival (6-18 April 2009):
http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/

Motivation:

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is a growing research field with many application areas that could  have a big impact not only economically, but also on the way we live and the kind of relationships we may develop with machines. Due to its interdisciplinary nature different views and approaches towards HRI need to be nurtured. This symposium will provide a platform to discuss collaboratively recent findings and challenges in HRI. Different categories of submissions are encouraged that reflect the different types of research studies that are being carried out. The symposium will encourage a diversity of views on HRI and different approaches taken. In the highly interdisciplinary research field of HRI, a peaceful dialogue among such approaches is expected to contribute to the synthesis of a body of knowledge that may help HRI sustain its creative inertia that has drawn to HRI during the past 10 years many researchers from HCI, robotics, psychology, the social sciences, and other fields. Continue reading “CFP: New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction”

CFP: ISSNIP 2008 Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2008)

A new HRI symposium has emerged. It will take place on December 15-18, 2008 in Sydney. Here is their call for papers:

Human-robot interaction and collaboration is a quickly growing research area with enormous potential applications in various industries, assistive technologies and human life. The need for human-machine interaction is fundamental to almost all robotic system applications, from operator control of large robot fleets, through intervention in search and rescue robotics, to use of robots in aged care and domestic settings. Together human and machine must cooperatively achieve a task, requiring a joint understanding of abilities and intent, and safe joint management of task execution.  Continue reading “CFP: ISSNIP 2008 Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2008)”

Interactive Vision Studio

At the Designed Intelligence Research Group of Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology, we build an Interactive Vision Studio. We use a single camera and a single projector, which eliminates the need to align and synchronize multiple screens and cameras. Both, the camera and the projector have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, which means that they have a 16:9 aspect ratio. Given the width of the projection screen of 6 meters, the screen should be 3.37 meters high to achieve the 16:9 aspect ratio. However, even tall people rarely exceed 2 meters in height. We therefore decided to exclude one third of the vertical dimension, which resulted in final dimensions for the screen of 592 cm x 222 cm. It follows that the projection will use 1920 x 720 pixels. The projector had to be placed at a distance of 12 meters from the screen to achieve this projection size. Continue reading “Interactive Vision Studio”

HRI2008 Student Design Competition

I organized the HRI2008 Student Design Competition this year. We had seven teams from around the world, each giving the jury (Hiroshi Ishiguro, Kerstin Dautenhan, Peter Kahn, Karl MacDorman, audience) a five minutes presentation. The students created marvelous robots in the short time that was available to them. In the end, the team from Amsterdam won with their Phobot.

The teams with their robots.

The teams and their robots.

Press coverage of the HRI Converence

Design Competition event: