With the deployment of robots in public realms, researchers are seeing more and more cases of abusive disinhibition towards robots. Because robots embody gendered identities, poor navigation of antisocial dynamics may reinforce or exacerbate gender-based violence. Robots deployed in social settings must recognize and respond to abuse in a way that minimizes ethical risk. This will require designers to first understand the risk posed by abuse of robots, and how humans perceive robot-directed abuse. To that end, we conducted an exploratory study of reactions to a physically abusive interaction between a human perpetrator and a victimized agent. Given extensions of gendered biases to robotic agents, as well as associations between an agent’s human likeness and the experiential capacity attributed to it, we quasi-manipulated the victim’s humanness (via use of a human actor vs. NAO robot) and gendering (via inclusion of stereotypically masculine vs. feminine cues in their presentation) across four video-recorded reproductions of the interaction. Analysis of data from 417 participants, each of whom watched one of the four videos, indicates that the intensity of emotional distress felt by an observer is associated with their gender identification, previous experience with victimization, hostile sexism, and support for social stratification, as well as the victim’s gendering.

With their ability to embody users in physically distant spaces, telepresence robots have gained popularity in environments including hospitals, schools, and offices. However, with platforms lacking in individuation and social presence, users often personalize telepresence robots with clothing and accessories to increase their recognizability and sense of embodiment. Toward understanding personalization preferences, as well as perceptions of personalized platforms, we conducted a series of five studies that investigate patterns in personalization of a telepresence robot and evaluate the impacts of common personalizations along five dimensions (robot uniqueness, humanness, pleasantness/unpleasantness, and people's willingness to interact with it). Finding a strong preference for the use of clothing and headwear in Studies 1-2 (N=52), we systematically manipulated a robot's appearance using these items and evaluated the qualitative and quantitative impacts on observer perceptions in Studies 3-4 (N=160). Observing that personalization increased perceptions of uniqueness and humanness, but also decreased positive responding, we then investigated the associations between personalization preferences and perceptions via a fifth study (N=100). Across the five studies, tensions emerged between operators' interest in using wigs and interlocutors' dislike of wigs. This result highlights a need to consider both operator and interlocutor perspectives when personalizing telepresence robots.

The generalizability of empirical research depends on the reproduction of findings across settings and populations. Consequently, generalizations demand resources beyond that which is typically available to any one laboratory. With collective interest in the joint Simon effect (JSE) -- a phenomenon that suggests people work more effectively with humanlike (as opposed to mechanomorphic) robots -- we pursued a multi-institutional research cooperation between robotics researchers, social scientists, and software engineers. To evaluate the robustness of the JSE in dyadic human-robot interactions, we constructed an experimental infrastructure for exact, lab-independent reproduction of robot behavior. Deployment of our infrastructure across three institutions with distinct research orientations (well-resourced versus resource-constrained) provides initial demonstration of the success of our approach and the degree to which it can alleviate technical barriers to HRI reproducibility. Moreover, with the three deployments situated in culturally distinct contexts (Germany, the U.S. Midwest, and the Mexico-U.S. Border), observation of a JSE at each site provides evidence its generalizability across settings and populations.

Both perceptual mechanisms (e.g., threat detection/avoidance) and social mechanisms (e.g., fears fostered via negative media) may explain the existence of the uncanny valley; however, existing literature lacks sufficient evidence to decide whether one, the other, or a combination best accounts for the valley's effects. As perceptually oriented explanations imply the valley should be evident early in development, we investigated whether it presents in the responding of children ( N=80; ages 5-10) to agents of varying human similarity. We found that, like adults, children were most averse to highly humanlike robots (relative to less humanlike robots and humans). But, unlike adults, children's aversion did not translate to avoidance. The findings thus indicate, consistent with perceptual explanations, that the valley effect manifests well before adulthood. However, further research is needed to understand the emergence of the valley's behavioral consequences.

The emergence and spread of humanlike robots into increasingly public domains has revealed a concerning phenomenon: people's unabashed dehumanization of robots, particularly those gendered as female. Here we examined this phenomenon further towards understanding whether other socially marginalized cues (racialization in the likeness of Asian and Black identities), like female-gendering, are associated with the manifestation of dehumanization (e.g., objectification, stereotyping) in human-robot interactions. To that end, we analyzed free-form comments (N = 535) on three videos, each depicting a gynoid - Bina48, Nadine, or Yangyang - racialized as Black, White, and Asian respectively. As a preliminary control, we additionally analyzed commentary (N = 674) on three videos depicting women embodying similar identity cues. The analyses indicate that people more frequently dehumanize robots racialized as Asian and Black, than they do of robots racialized as White. Additional, preliminary evaluation of how people's responding towards the gynoids compares to that towards other people suggests that the gynoids' ontology (as robots) further facilitates the dehumanization.

Towards understanding the public's perception of humanlike robots, we examined commentary on 24 YouTube videos depicting social robots ranging in human similarity - from Honda's Asimo to Hiroshi Ishiguro's Geminoids. In particular, we investigated how people have responded to the emergence of highly humanlike robots (e.g., Bina48) in contrast to those with more prototypically-“robotic” appearances (e.g., Asimo), coding the frequency at which the uncanny valley versus fears of replacement and/or a “technology takeover” arise in online discourse based on the robot's appearance. Here we found that, consistent with Masahiro Mori's theory of the uncanny valley, people's commentary reflected an aversion to highly humanlike robots. Correspondingly, the frequency of uncanny valley-related commentary was significantly higher in response to highly humanlike robots relative to those of more prototypical appearances. Independent of the robots' human similarity, we further observed a moderate correlation to exist between people's explicit fears of a “technology takeover” and their emotional responding towards robots. Finally, through the course of our investigation, we encountered a third and rather disturbing trend - namely, the unabashed sexualization of female-gendered robots. In exploring the frequency at which this sexualization manifests in the online commentary, we found it to exceed that of both the uncanny valley and fears of robot sentience/replacement combined. In sum, these findings help to shed light on the relevance of the uncanny valley “in the wild” and further, they help situate it with respect to other design challenges for HRI.

People tend to anthropomorphize agents that look and/or act human, and further, they tend to evaluate such agents more positively. This, in turn, has motivated the development of robotic agents that are humanlike in appearance and/or behavior. Yet, some agents -- often those with highly humanlike appearances -- have been found to elicit the opposite, wherein they are evaluated more negatively than their less humanlike counterparts. These trends are captured by Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley hypothesis, which describes a (uncanny) valley in emotional responding - a switch from affinity to dislike - elicited by agents that are ``too humanlike'. However, while the valley phenomenon has been repeatedly observed via subjective measures, it remains unknown as to whether such evaluations reflect a potential impact to a person's behavior (i.e., aversion). We attempt to address this gap in the literature via a novel experimental paradigm employing both traditional subjective ratings, as well as measures of peoples' behavioral and phsyiological responding. The results show that not only do people rate highly humanlike robots as uncanny, but moreover, they exhibit greater avoidance of such encounters than encounters with less humanlike and human agents. Thus, the findings not only support Mori's hypothesis, but further, they indicate the valley should be taken as a serious consideration for peoples' interactions with humanlike agents.

Recent proposals for how robots should talk to people when they give advice suggest that the same strategies humans employ with other humans are effective for robots as well. However, the evidence is exclusively based on people's observation of robot giving advice to other humans. Hence, it is not clear whether the results still apply when people actually participate in real interactions with robots. We address this shortcoming in a novel systematic mixed-methods study where we employ both survey-based subjective and brain-based objective measures (using functional near infrared spectroscopy). The results show that previous results from observation conditions do not transfer automatically to interaction conditions, and that robot appearance and interaction distance are important modulators of human perceptions of robot behavior in advice-giving contexts.

The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) describes the sudden change in a person's affect from affinity to aversion that is evoked by robots that border a human-like appearance. The portion of the human-likeness spectrum in which such aversion is posited to occur is referred to as the “uncanny valley”. However, evidence in support of the UVH is primarily based on subjectively assessed evaluations. Thus it remains an open question as to whether there are behavioral or neurophysiological manifestations of uncanny valley effects. To address this gap in literature, we investigated the activation of the anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC) - a region of the brain associated with emotion regulation - in response to a series of robots with varying human-likeness. We hypothesized that highly human-like robots - which have been found to receive negative subjective attributions - will also elicit increased activity in the PFC versus humans or robots with lesser degrees of human-likeness in accordance with the UVH. Our results show a “valley” in brain activity in the PFC corresponding to the valley observed via subjective measures alone, thus suggesting one neural manifestation (the PFC) of uncanny valley effects and further supporting the affective response (aversion) posited to occur by the UVH. However, the results also reveal a second “uncanny valley” in prefrontal hemodynamics, which suggests that the effects (and the contributing factors) are more complex than previously understood.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been investigated extensively with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and identified as a neural correlate of emotion regulation and decision-making, particularly in the context of moral utilitarian dilemmas. However, there are two limitations of previous work: (1) fMRI requires strict constraints on the physical experimental environment and (2) experimental manipulations have yet to consider the role of agency on the dilemma outcome and the corresponding neural activity. In this paper, we extend previous work by first evaluating an alternative neuroimaging technique, functional near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), for observing decision-making processes in a less-constrained environment. We then examine the role of agency in deciding emotional (moral) and non-emotional dilemmas through a 2-part, 20-subject preliminary investigation. Our findings are two-fold: they suggest (1) NIRS is a potential alternative to fMRI in this decision-making context and (2) agency shows some influence on prefrontal neural activity, making NIRS a promising method for objective evaluation of agency and emotional value in human-agent interactions.

Phylogenetic trees are representations of evolutionary relationships amongst species. Interviews of instructors and students have revealed that novice biologists have difficulty understanding phylogenetics. Moreover, misinterpretations of phylogenetics are common among college-level students. In this paper we present Phylo-Genie, a tabletop interface for fostering collaborative learning of phylogenetics. We conducted an experimental study with 56 participants, comparing students' conceptual learning and engagement using Phylo-Genie as: 1) a multi-touch tabletop interface and 2) a pen and paper activity. Our findings show that the tabletop implementation fosters collaborative learning by engaging users in the activity. We also shed light on the way in which our design principles facilitated engagement and collaborative learning in a tabletop environment.

We present G-nome Surfer 2.0, a tabletop interface for fostering inquiry-based learning of genomics. We conducted an experimental study with 48 participants that compared students' learning of genomic concepts using existing bioinformatics tools and using two alternative implementations of G-nome Surfer: a collaborative multi-mouse GUI and a tabletop interface. Our findings indicate that G-nome Surfer improves students' performance, reduces workload, and increases enjoyment. The comparison of tabletop and multi-mouse implementations further shows that the tabletop condition results in four educational benefits: 1) increasing physical participation, 2) encouraging reflection, 3) fostering effective collaboration, and 4) facilitating more intuitive interaction.

Molecular and computational biologists develop new insights by gathering heterogeneous data from genomic databases and leveraging bioinformatics tools. Through a qualitative study with 17 participants, we found that molecular and computational biologists experience difficulties interpreting, comparing, annotating, sharing, and relating this vast amount of biological information. We further observed that such interactions are critical for forming new scientific hypotheses. These observations motivated the creation of G-nome Surfer, a tabletop interface for collaborative exploration of genomic data that implements multi-touch and tangible interaction techniques. G-nome Surfer was developed in close collaboration with domain scientists and is aimed at lowering the threshold for using bioinformatics tools. A first-use study with 16 participants found that G-nome Surfer enables users to gain biological insights that are based on multiple forms of evidence with minimal overhead.