Research

The effects of gender and personality of robot assistants on customers’ acceptance of their service

The Covid-19 pandemic has stimulated the use of social robots in front-office services. However, some initial applications yielded disappointing results, as managers were unaware of the level of development of the robots’ artificial intelligence …

How do Consumers’ Gender and Rational Thinking Affect the Acceptance of Entertainment Social Robots?

In recent years, the rapid ageing of the population, a longer life expectancy and elderly people’s desire to live independently are social changes that put pressure on healthcare systems. This context is boosting the demand for companion and …

I Know How You Feel: The Importance of Interaction Style on Users Acceptance in Entertainment Scenario

In this article, we aim to evaluate the role of robots' personality-driven behavioural patterns on users' intention to use in an entertainment scenario. Toward such a goal, we designed two personalities: one introverted with an empathic and …

Introducing CARESSER: a framework for in situ learning robot social assistance from expert knowledge and demonstrations

Socially assistive robots have the potential to augment and enhance therapist’s effectiveness in repetitive tasks such as cognitive therapies. However, their contribution has generally been limited as domain experts have not been fully involved in …

Do I Have a Personality? Endowing Care Robots with Context-Dependent Personality Traits

Recent studies have revealed the key importance of modelling personality in robots to improve interaction quality by empowering them with social-intelligence capabilities. Most research relies on verbal and non-verbal features related to personality …

Automatic Learning of Cognitive Exercises for Socially Assistive Robotics

In this paper, we present a learning approach to facilitate the teaching of new board exercises to assistive robotic systems. We formulate the problem as the learning of action models using Boolean predicates, disjunctive preconditions, and …

The Road to a successful HRI: AI, Trust and ethicS - TRAITS

The aim of this workshop is to give researchers from academia and industry the possibility to discuss the inter- and multi- disciplinary nature of the relationships between people and robots towards effective and long-lasting collaborations. This …

Discovering SOCIABLE: Using a Conceptual Model to Evaluate the Legibility and Effectiveness of Backchannel Cues in an Entertainment Scenario

Robots are expected to become part of everyday life. However, while there have been important breakthroughs during the recent decades in terms of technological advances, the ability of robots to interact with humans intuitively and effectively is …

Cognitive System Framework for Brain-Training Exercise based on Human-Robot Interaction

Every 3 seconds someone develops dementia worldwide.Brain-training exercises, preferably involving also physical activity, have shown their potential to monitor and improve the brain function of people affected by Alzheimer Disease (AD) or Mild …

Natural Teaching of Robot-Assisted Rearranging Exercises for Cognitive Training

Social Assistive Robots are a powerful tool to be used in patients' cognitive training. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a new methodology to enable caregivers to teach cognitive exercises to the robot in an easy and natural way. We build …