Social robots are taking major roles in our lives through many sectors, ranging from eHealth to industry. However, social robots that can interact with people are expensive. In this study, we evaluate what makes an inexpensive retro-projected Face-Display/robot different from the advanced social robot “Furhat”. How will a retro-projected robot be perceived compared to an advanced social robot? We built a retro-projected robot and compared it with Furhat. Seventy-two participants interacted with both robots in a between-subjects study design. We compare the two robots using different HRI questionnaires. Furthermore, we investigate which robot face is preferred to interact with, a human face (due to social agency) or an anime face (due to Japanese anime culture). In a retro-projected robot, a human face is preferable as it is rated higher in terms of anthropomorphization, trust, competence, and empathy. An anime face was rated higher in warmth, attractiveness, pleasantness, and comfort to see. In Furhat, few differences were noticed between the human and anime faces. A human face was perceived to be more emphatically responsive, and an anime face was rated highly in trustworthiness, warmth, competence, and empathic understanding. Furhat excelled significantly in the aspects of anthropomorphization, likeability, trustworthiness, warmth, competence, empathic responsiveness, attractiveness, and pleasantness to see. On the contrary, the retro-projected robot excelled in inducing social discomfort. Interestingly, both robots were perceived similarly in aspects of perceived intelli-gence and safety, empathic understanding, and comfort to see. An anime face on either robot is significantly more pleasant and is always perceived to be young in age. We deduce that retro-projected robots are inferior to Furhat in most HRI aspects and similar in a few of them. Thus, retro-projected robots can serve effectively in fields where the three aforementioned indifferent aspects are the main requirements in an application. Moreover, whenever aesthetics and visual pleasantness are needed, an anime face is preferred over a human one.

Embarrassment is a social emotion that stands out due to its relatively short duration. It depends on being witnessed by others where the relationship between the actor and the witness is not close. Surprisingly, despite its importance and relevance, very few studies investigated the embarrassment emotion psychophysiologically. Certainly, a comprehensive study of the embarrassment emotion will benefit the affective computing community and push integrating such emotion into our technological affective systems forward. In our study, we compare the psychophysiological correlates of embarrassment emotion between shy males and females. We collected the electrodermal activity (EDA) and electrocardiogram (ECG) data obtained during experimentally induced embarrassment from 9 shy male subjects. We compare our data to the results of another work where the ECG and EDA data are also collected but for shy female subjects. Our goal is to highlight gender differences in the psychophysiological markers of the embarrassment emotion. Electrodermal behavior was similar and there were no gender differences. Interestingly, gender differences surfaced when ECG data was being studied. Unlike shy females, shy males' heart rate decreases when they are embarrassed. We suspect that the heart rate differences could be the reason behind blushing being more pervasive and prominent in females than males.

When developing commercial games, the difficulty level is carefully designed to satisfy the majority of game players. An inappropriate difficulty level can cause stress for game players and lead them to quit the game. Designing a game that is suitable and enjoyable for everyone is a daunting task, especially with the specific individual needs of everyone. Our goal is to provide insights into game design that can be suitable for males and females. Thus, we investigate gender differences in the game Tetris. We compare subjective ratings, questionnaire responses, electrodermal activity (EDA), and electrocardiogram (ECG) data obtained from 5 males and 5 females while playing Tetris. Our results show that a high feeling of control correlates with high skin conductance level (SCL), skin conductance response (SCR), and low heart rate (HR) which was found in the male sample. Low feelings of control and high anxiety correlate with high HR and low SCL and SCR, which was realized in the female sample. Game self-skill, playing hours, and game experience questionnaire (G EQ) responses do not show gender differences in gameplay. Gender differences were exclusively pronounced when physiological data was studied.

Educational robots are becoming increasingly incorporated into classrooms to teach many subjects including language, science, and also substitute teachers. In recent years, ChatGPT has become easy to use for education but there are problems if students take it literally and believe it. We investigate the effectiveness of different deception techniques through robot teaching. We conduct an experiment in a Japanese Junior High School with 14 students where we investigate the learning and deception effectiveness, and believability using the social robot "Furhat". Moreover, we vary the social agency of the robot by using two different faces, a human (social identity theory) and an anime face (Japanese anime culture). A robot with an anime face achieved a significantly higher learning effectiveness compared to a robot with a human face. However, the human robot face was found to be excellent at deceiving when the paltering deception technique was utilized.

This paper investigates the secrecy and reliability of a communication where the user is assisting an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in detecting the adversary’s attack. The adversary is assumed to be sophisticated such that it can conduct eavesdropping and jamming attacks. The IDS is equipped with the capability of detecting both of those attacks. Two scenarios were considered; the first scenario is that the user is trying to detect the adversary by assisting the IDS, and the second scenario is that the user is equipped with a silent time slot in its communication protocol besides assisting the IDS, in order to provoke the adversary into jamming the channel, thus detecting it with a higher probability. Interestingly, adding the capability of detecting eavesdropping attacks pushed the adversary into conducting jamming attacks much more, thus aiding in detecting the adversary earlier. All of that was modeled by means of stochastic game theory, in order to analyze and study the behavior and the interactions between the user and the adversary. Results show a major improvement in the first scenario by 188% and an improvement by 294% in the second scenario in the game value when the probability of detecting eavesdropping attacks was 0.3, which represents the payoff that the user gains in terms of secrecy and reliability.