Advanced Topics in AI and Robotics

Abstract

Social robots bear the potential to elicit unique interactions with humans that resemble interpersonal communication. Hence it is of great interest to understand the psychological consequences of such interactions on humans. In this lecture we will discuss: What are social robots? Which role does psychology play in human–robot interactions? And we will see examples of experimental research studying the effects of social robots on humans.

Short Bio

Laura Kunold is an assistant professor of Human Centered Design of socio-digital systems at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. She received her PhD in Philosophy at the Faculty of Engineering from the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2017 with her dissertation on the psychological effects of robot touch on humans. She then continued her research on human-robot interactions and child-robot interactions as a postdoc at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University. Her research interests lie in the design of robot behavior from a human-centered perspective, including fundamental questions about human responses to a robot's embodiment, morphology, and communicative cues. In terms of application domains, she is particularly interested in how humans and robots will work together in digitalized workplaces of the future.

Papers relevant for the talk

1. Laura Hoffmann, Melanie Derksen and Stefan Kopp. 2020. What a Pity, Pepper! How Warmth in Robots’ Language impacts Reactions to Errors during a Collaborative Task. In HRI ’20 Companion: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, March 23–26, 2020, Cambridge, UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3371382.3378242

2. Hoffmann L, Krämer NC (2021) The persuasive power of robot touch. Behavioral and evaluative consequences of non-functional touch from a robot. PLoS ONE 16(5): e0249554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249554

3. Astrid M. Rosenthal-von der Pütten, Frank P. Schulte, Sabrina C. Eimler, Sabrina Sobieraj, Laura Hoffmann, Stefan Maderwald, Matthias Brand, Nicole C. Krämer, Investigations on empathy towards humans and robots using fMRI, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 33, 2014, Pages 201-212, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.01.004. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214000090)

The lecture will be held in English and is aimed at students and staff of the H-BRS. Interested parties are cordially invited.