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Challenges in Human-Robot Interactions for Social Robotics

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensors and Robotics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2024 | Viewed by 2359

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon University, 1649-004 Lisboa, Portugal
Interests: social robotics; human-robot interaction; architectural aspects of robotics, including robot modelling and control; networked and cooperative robotics; systems integration
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Robotics, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad 30, Leganés, 28911 Madrid, Spain
Interests: social robots; assistive robotics; human-robot interaction; autonomous robots; decision making; multimodal dialogue management; robot expressiveness; artificial emotions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of System Engineering and Automation, Carlos III University, Madrid, Spain
Interests: human–robot interaction; feature extraction; pattern matching; speaker recognition; speech-based user interfaces; time-frequency analysis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Systems Engineering and Automation Carlos III University, Madrid, Spain
Interests: social robotics; computer vision; perception; activity detection; human-robot interaction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Gradually, social robots are becoming increasingly influential in human societies, and successful interactions between robots and humans are essential to ensure the former’s integration and acceptance.

This Special Issue focuses on human–robot interactions in social robotics. Nowadays, interactions with computational devices are ubiquitous in daily life, and the lessons acquired have helped design our interactions with robots. We must improve the effectiveness of the interactions between humans and robots to learn about humans in their social environment. Moreover, existing technologies in social robotics affect how humans interact with these robots. Novel technologies and applications endow robots and humans with new ways to interact that will potentially improve human–robot interactions.

Robots complying with social norms, the challenges in developing interfaces to interact with social robots, the dynamics of human perception, novel interaction capabilities, sustainability, closing the technological gap between humans and robots, the design of the robots considering their purpose within the interaction, and the future of social robots are just a few examples of themes this Special Issue aims to cover.

Dr. João Silva Sequeira
Dr. Álvaro Castro Gonzalez
Dr. Fernando Alonso Martín
Dr. José Carlos Castillo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • human-robot interaction
  • social robots
  • robot interfaces
  • human perception
  • interaction metrics
  • sustainability
  • human-robot gap

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 1823 KiB  
Article
When Trustworthiness Meets Face: Facial Design for Social Robots
by Yao Song and Yan Luximon
Sensors 2024, 24(13), 4215; https://doi.org/10.3390/s24134215 - 28 Jun 2024
Viewed by 278
Abstract
As a technical application in artificial intelligence, a social robot is one of the branches of robotic studies that emphasizes socially communicating and interacting with human beings. Although both robot and behavior research have realized the significance of social robot design for its [...] Read more.
As a technical application in artificial intelligence, a social robot is one of the branches of robotic studies that emphasizes socially communicating and interacting with human beings. Although both robot and behavior research have realized the significance of social robot design for its market success and related emotional benefit to users, the specific design of the eye and mouth shape of a social robot in eliciting trustworthiness has received only limited attention. In order to address this research gap, our study conducted a 2 (eye shape) × 3 (mouth shape) full factorial between-subject experiment. A total of 211 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to the six scenarios in the study. After exposure to the stimuli, perceived trustworthiness and robot attitude were measured accordingly. The results showed that round eyes (vs. narrow eyes) and an upturned-shape mouth or neutral mouth (vs. downturned-shape mouth) for social robots could significantly improve people’s trustworthiness and attitude towards social robots. The effect of eye and mouth shape on robot attitude are all mediated by the perceived trustworthiness. Trustworthy human facial features could be applied to the robot’s face, eliciting a similar trustworthiness perception and attitude. In addition to empirical contributions to HRI, this finding could shed light on the design practice for a trustworthy-looking social robot. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges in Human-Robot Interactions for Social Robotics)
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32 pages, 4861 KiB  
Article
Creating Expressive Social Robots That Convey Symbolic and Spontaneous Communication
by Enrique Fernández-Rodicio, Álvaro Castro-González, Juan José Gamboa-Montero, Sara Carrasco-Martínez and Miguel A. Salichs
Sensors 2024, 24(11), 3671; https://doi.org/10.3390/s24113671 - 5 Jun 2024
Viewed by 478
Abstract
Robots are becoming an increasingly important part of our society and have started to be used in tasks that require communicating with humans. Communication can be decoupled in two dimensions: symbolic (information aimed to achieve a particular goal) and spontaneous (displaying the speaker’s [...] Read more.
Robots are becoming an increasingly important part of our society and have started to be used in tasks that require communicating with humans. Communication can be decoupled in two dimensions: symbolic (information aimed to achieve a particular goal) and spontaneous (displaying the speaker’s emotional and motivational state) communication. Thus, to enhance human–robot interactions, the expressions that are used have to convey both dimensions. This paper presents a method for modelling a robot’s expressiveness as a combination of these two dimensions, where each of them can be generated independently. This is the first contribution of our work. The second contribution is the development of an expressiveness architecture that uses predefined multimodal expressions to convey the symbolic dimension and integrates a series of modulation strategies for conveying the robot’s mood and emotions. In order to validate the performance of the proposed architecture, the last contribution is a series of experiments that aim to study the effect that the addition of the spontaneous dimension of communication and its fusion with the symbolic dimension has on how people perceive a social robot. Our results show that the modulation strategies improve the users’ perception and can convey a recognizable affective state. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges in Human-Robot Interactions for Social Robotics)
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22 pages, 13026 KiB  
Article
Development of a Personal Guide Robot That Leads a Guest Hand-in-Hand While Keeping a Distance
by Hironobu Wakabayashi, Yutaka Hiroi, Kenzaburo Miyawaki and Akinori Ito
Sensors 2024, 24(7), 2345; https://doi.org/10.3390/s24072345 - 7 Apr 2024
Viewed by 738
Abstract
This paper proposes a novel tour guide robot, “ASAHI ReBorn”, which can lead a guest by hand one-on-one while maintaining a proper distance from the guest. The robot uses a stretchable arm interface to hold the guest’s hand and adjusts its speed according [...] Read more.
This paper proposes a novel tour guide robot, “ASAHI ReBorn”, which can lead a guest by hand one-on-one while maintaining a proper distance from the guest. The robot uses a stretchable arm interface to hold the guest’s hand and adjusts its speed according to the guest’s pace. The robot also follows a given guide path accurately using the Robot Side method, a robot navigation method that follows a pre-defined path quickly and accurately. In addition, a control method is introduced that limits the angular velocity of the robot to avoid the robot’s quick turn while guiding the guest. We evaluated the performance and usability of the proposed robot through experiments and user studies. The tour-guiding experiment revealed that the proposed method that keeps distance between the robot and the guest using the stretchable arm enables the guests to look around the exhibits compared with the condition where the robot moved at a constant velocity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges in Human-Robot Interactions for Social Robotics)
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