Tag: robot

TicTacToe Playing LEGO Mindstorms Robot Using Computer Vision

You can play TicTacToe with this LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot. It uses three motors to drop the balls into the right field. It uses a NXTCam to view the board and then calculates the best move using a MiniMax Algorithm. All future moves are explored an rated according to their winning chances. The work is based on the TicTacToe code of Thomas Kaffka. An IR sensor detects your hand when you drop your ball. The robot is using red balls and the human player uses blue balls. The Java code is available over at Github. The building instructions are available for LEGO Digital Designer. I used the MinuteBot baseplate, which is useful for building static Technic/Mindstorms models.

 

LDD does not have all the required pars in its database. You will have to replace 22961 with 27940. You will also need to add a worm wheel 27938. In addition you should use a lamp to provide consistent lighting. I used a USB powered LED circular lamp the can be powered through the USB port of the EV3. I only had to take out the lens in the middle so that the camera fits through the hole. A rubber band holds the light in place. To calibrate the robot I added a little arm at the end of the base plate against which the robot arm rotates. The position of the camera can be centered on the board using the wrench and through sliding along the axles.

You can also find information about the robot over at Rebrickable. The inventory there is correct and complete. Except for the base plate of course.

 

Persistent Lexical Entrainment in HRI

Jürgen presented our paper on “Persistent Lexical Entrainment in HRI”. The full paper is available at the ACM Digital Library.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

In this study, we set out to ask three questions. First, does lexical entrainment with a robot interlocutor persist after an interaction? Second, how does the influence of social robots on humans compare with the influence of humans on each other? Finally, what role is played by personality traits in lexical entrainment to robots, and how does this compare with the role of personality in entrainment to other humans? Our experiment shows that first, robots can indeed prompt lexical entrainment that persists after an interaction is over. This finding is interesting since it demonstrates that speakers can be linguistically influenced by a robot, in a way that is not merely motivated by a desire to be understood. Second, we find similarities between lexical entrainment to the robot peer and lexical entrainment to a human peer, although the effects are stronger when the peer is human. Third, we find that whether the peer is a robot or a human, similar personality traits contribute to lexical entrainment. In both peer conditions, participants who score higher on “Openness to experience” are more likely to adopt less conventional terminology.

Robot Philosophy Conference 2016

I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the Robot Philosophy Conference 2016. The people in Denmark have been very friendly and our hotel is great. It is very interesting to see Human-Robot Interaction being discussed from the perspective of philosophy. Below is the recording of my keynote:

 

 

 

PhD Position: The influence of robots on the development of language

The HIT Lab NZ has an opening for a PhD in Human-Robot Interaction entitled: “The influence of robots on the development of language“.

The ‘Wordovators’ project is a three-year project funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The project will conduct large-scale experiments in the form of computerized word games.  These games will be designed to probe the factors underpinning word creation and creativity, and how these develop through the life-span. One strand of the project will probe particular issues surrounding interactions between people and humanoid Robots. How are new words created and adopted in contexts involving such interactions? This PhD position is for a highly motivated student to join the project team, and conduct work that explores the ways that robots might shape human languages. These studies will analyze the factors and processes that might contribute to the influence of robots on the vocabularies of English and of artificial languages in imaginary worlds. Continue reading “PhD Position: The influence of robots on the development of language”

Dutch and Chinese Translation of the Godspeed Questionnaire Series

Thanks to Bram Vanderborght and his team, a Dutch and Chinese translation of the Godspeed Questionnaire Series is now available. With this measurement instrument you can assess the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots. You can find a detailed description of the instrument in our article.