Department of Computer Science
Workshop: Empathic Human - Robot Interaction
Dr. Erwin Prassler (Foto), professor of robotics at H-BRS and vice president of the IEEE- Robotics and Automation Society, presented a talk titled “Robotics and Empathy: The Uncanny Valley / A Critique”.
He took a deeper look at the hypothesis that humans tend to accept humanoid robots better when they appear more human. However, there is a revulsion towards machines that are nearly, but not quite human in their appearance.
Prassler therefore recommended the building of robots that serve humans but do not pretend to be humans. He narrated several examples of interaction between robots and persons with dementia during the trials conducted at a care facility in Germany (Project EmoRobot). The trials showed that movements were crucial for attracting attention to the robot and for generating interest to interact with it. However, a human-looking robot was either perceived as a puppet or as a remotely-operated toy. To conclude, he recommended keeping the uncanny valley as wide as possible.
Our alumna Teena Hassan, who co-organised the event, has contributed largely to the EmoRobot project. She finished her Master of Autonomous Systems in 2014 with a thesis on "Dynamic facial expression estimation by means of model fitting". She now works at Fraunhofer Insitut IIS in Erlangen, where she also conducted part of the research for her master's degree.
From left to right:
Prof. Andrea Bonarini (one of the speakers, Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Prof. Ana Paiva (co-Organizer, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal), Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn (main organiser, University of Hertfordshire, UK), Teena Hassan (co-organiser, alumna of H-BRS, now Fraunhofer IIS, Germany), Dr. Katrin Lohan (co-organiser, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland)
Photo: Dr. Jens Garbas, Fraunhofer IIS, Germany