As online platforms have become increasingly important in the last decade, it also makes sense to conduct B2B (Business to Business) operations on online platforms. This paper deals with the aspects of trust and transparency in a B2B context, specifically in the development (and operation) of a platform where microelectronics manufacturers are connected with customers who want to produce a certain (part of a) product and find the best company to do so. The methods used were workshops with different stakeholder groups and expert reviews of the user interfaces of the platform under development. Our findings include that transparency and the power/freedom to do and undo actions within such a platform are essential for potential users as well as the care for their intellectual property. Additionally, we identified pitfalls in the current design which could reduce trust, e.g., as in our context, inconsistency regarding error messages.

Speculative Design videos are a useful tool for asking provocative questions like “What could possibly go wrong?” and provide a starting point for discussions of future technologies. This short paper presents and discusses a speculative video showcasing a “thanabot” - a technological solution for maintaining a digital presence of a person’s identity beyond their (biological) death. The video shows a small human-like companion robot which gets plugged in with different identities of people who were emotionally close to an older adult, now living alone. While brainstorming the scenario, the filming process, and creating the video, we critically engaged and reflected on creating an afterlife technology and its social and emotional impacts, potential, and challenges. We wanted to provide a starting point for critical discussions and reflections on future companion robots and what kinds of human-agent relationships we (do not) want to strive for.

As autonomous functional robots proliferate in public spaces, understanding their acceptance among diverse populations becomes crucial. Traditional models of technology acceptance focus on behavioral and cognitive factors, overlooking the socio-cultural and temporal scaffolding of human-robot interaction. To address this gap, we present two themes (Identity Matters, Community Matters) resulting from a qualitative analysis of ethnographic interviews (n = 20) with passersby and vendors who have experienced Starship delivery robots deployed in their communities. Situating the outcomes of our analysis in relation to existing technology acceptance models, we offer five lessons contributing to the efforts in understanding existence and usage-related acceptance of autonomous functional robots in public spaces.

Within human-robot interaction (HRI), research on robot personality has largely drawn on trait theories and models, such as the Big Five and OCEAN. We argue that reliance on trait models in HRI has led to a limited understanding of robot personality as a question of stable traits that can be designed into a robot plus how humans with certain traits respond to particular robots. However, trait-based approaches exist alongside other ways of understanding personality, including approaches focusing on more dynamic constructs such as adaptations and narratives. We suggest that a deep understanding of robot personality is only possible through a cross-disciplinary effort to integrate these different approaches. We propose an Integrative Framework for Robot Personality Research (IF), wherein robot personality is defined not as a property of the robot, nor of the human perceiving the robot, but as a complex assemblage of components at the intersection of robot design and human factors. With the IF, we aim to establish a common theoretical grounding for robot personality research that incorporates personality constructs beyond traits and treats these constructs as complementary and fundamentally interdependent.

This paper on industrial experience reports on two prominent public transport companies who decided to incorporate diversity more substantially into their corporate culture. To achieve the integration, an initiative was started and a project together with Fraunhofer Austria Research (Fraunhofer) and Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien) was launched. The project aims to support the companies in preparing their strategy for upcoming challenges such as the retirement of a large corpus of workers, recruiting new trainees, and finding new jobs for people within the company, whose working environment has changed drastically, e.g., due to the loss of bus or train driving licences because of health restrictions. The desired integration to strengthen diversity in their corporate culture started with shop inspections, expert interviews, diversity & future workshops, and a user study on a prototypical work system. The results were incorporated into diversity guidelines considering various drivers of change.

In the context of industrial settings, extensive research of in-situ projections has proven their benefits for task performance. However, to date, these projections have not explicitly addressed policies designed to mitigate the dangers and health risks that are just as important, if not more than task performance considerations in such settings. We developed in-situ projections for three different use cases: (1) assembly support at a workbench, (2) ergonomic lifting, (3) restricted areas, which we studied with 15 representative target users. We found the expected benefits of the task-supporting projection (use case 1), increasing task performance and causing minimal cognitive load. However, our data also suggest that the other projections (use case 2 and 3) did not improve policy compliance. Our findings indicate that in-situ projections are not the most suitable solution to nudge workers to policy compliance in an industrial assembly setting, as most participants ignored the policy after evaluating the dangers themselves. Furthermore, based on our limitations and findings, we reflect on how current study practices can be improved for ubiquitous systems, especially when aiding policy compliance.

People’s willingness to help robots has been explored in the lab and in the wild in various settings. While previous studies relied on robotic prototypes, service robots are now already deployed in public spaces. This presents a novel and exciting opportunity for human-robot interaction (HRI) scholars to study robotic technologies in the context of their deployment. In this paper, we present the qualitative methodology and the outcomes of an exploratory mixed-methods (observations, autoethnography, online content analysis) study of people voluntarily helping commercially deployed delivery robots in Tallinn, Estonia. Based on the cumulative findings of the three methods, we discuss how spontaneous help towards robots manifested, the situational factors that may have contributed to the observed helping behaviors, and the role that the perceptions of the robots as cute and helpful may have played in these interactions. While our findings support the assumption that human help is a reasonable mitigation strategy to overcoming the challenges service robots may face in uncontrolled environments, we also emphasize the importance of considering the ethical implications when commercial technology relies in part on passersby to succeed in its tasks.

Focusing on human experience of vulnerability in everyday life interaction scenarios is still a novel approach. So far, only a proof-of-concept online study has been conducted, and to extend this work, we present a follow-up online study. We consider in more detail how human experience of vulnerability caused by a trust violation through a privacy breach affects trust ratings in an interaction scenario with the PEPPER robot assisting with clothes shopping. We report the results from 32 survey responses and 11 semi-structured interviews. Our findings reveal the existence of the privacy paradox also for studying trust in HRI, which is a common observation describing a discrepancy between the stated privacy concerns by people and their behavior to safeguard it. Moreover, we reflect that participants considered only the added value of utility and entertainment when deciding whether or not to interact with the robot again, but not the privacy breach. We conclude that people might tolerate an untrustworthy robot even when they are feeling vulnerable in the everyday life situation of clothes shopping.

This paper presents a reflection on a master class on “Responsible Design of AI” aimed at raising critical thinking among students about the pros and cons of AI technology in everyday life usage on the example of chatbots. In contrast to typical approaches teaching existing policies and design guidelines, we aimed to challenge students by setting up a project on the “most unethical chatbot imaginable”. Our teaching concept therefore builds on students’ self-identified issues and concerns and develops guidelines for ethical chatbot design according to students’ interpretations of the capabilities and potential applications of these technologies. In our teaching we particularly focused on supporting mutual learning between teachers, students, and experts as foundational aspects. We conclude with reflections from the students regarding how this teaching approach can contribute to establish a critical and reflective mindset for future HCI researchers and developers.

Ensuring trust in human-robot interaction (HRI) is considered essential for widespread use of robots in society and everyday life. While the majority of studies use game-based and high-risk scenarios with low familiarity to gain a deeper understanding of human trust in robots, scenarios with more subtle trust violations that could happen in everyday life situations are less often considered. In this paper, we present a theory-driven approach to studying the situated trust in HRI by focusing on the experience of vulnerability. Focusing on vulnerability not only challenges previous work on trust in HRI from a theoretical perspective, but is also useful for guiding empirical investigations. As a first proof-of-concept study, we conducted an interactive online survey that demonstrates that it is possible to measure human experience of vulnerability in the ordinary, mundane, and familiar situation of clothes shopping. We conclude that the inclusion of subtle trust violation scenarios occurring in the everyday life situation of clothes shopping enables a better understanding of situated trust in HRI, which is of special importance when considering more near-future applications of robots.

Empirical evidence suggests that the first wave of commercially available social robots for private homes was doomed to fail. Robot start-ups shut down and participants in long-term field trials refused to use these robots after only weeks. We conducted a household study over the course of seven months, during which the commercially available Anki Vector robot was introduced to eight demographically diverse private homes for participants’ free use. The study aimed to understand which factors of owning Vector were relevant in the long-term, even if the participants did not sustainably integrate the robot into their daily lives. We used Domestic Robot Ecology (developed through studies on vacuum cleaning robots) to qualitatively analyse data collected through six household visits and compare the results with previous research on vacuum cleaning robots. Our results show the significance of subjective perceptions and expectations for what social companion robots are, how they work, and what they are or are not capable of doing. Due to a lack of perceived practical benefits and the decline of hedonic and social gain, the participating households did not sustainably integrate Vector into their daily lives. Based on our findings, we conclude that the adoption process of personal companion robots slightly differs from that of functional vacuum cleaning robots but may not differ substantially from technology adoption processes in general.

With the vision of Industry 4.0 and cobots, working conditions in industrial settings are starting to change. We review related literature from the fields of human-robot interaction, work and organizational psychology, and sociology of work, as well as an exemplary project case study, and identify research gaps regarding the implications of cobots for work environments. We argue that we are in a transition phase from automation to actual collaboration with robots in manufacturing, and that this will open up a new problem space for investigations, in which a practice lens will be crucial. Based on this, we propose a research agenda for social practice and workplace studies to explore the sociotechnical environment of Industry 4.0 involving cobots at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

This paper presents the results of a user acceptance survey (based on the Technology Acceptance Model ? TAM) of the humanoid social robot Pepper as a communication channel in different information retrieval scenarios in a business context. In total, 239 passers-by participated in the survey, which had a specific focus on the impact of perceived safety and security aspects. The results revealed a positive assessment of its perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. It also showed how safety, data protection, and privacy concerns impact the intention to use the robot. The study findings are supported by the outcomes of eight expert interviews.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to shutdowns in several countries all over the world, including Austria (March to April 2020). In February 2020 we initiated an ethnographic study to explore the adoption of the commercially available robot Anki Vector in eight households. The fourth household visit of this study happened right during the shutdown, and was thus conducted online. We were particularly curious to see if being isolated at home increased (or changed) peoples' engagement with Vector (as we expected people to have more time with the robot and a higher need for entertainment and companionship). Our interviews revealed that novel use cases emerged during the shutdown: a single-person household found a way to integrate Vector in their Yoga routine, and video calls with family and friends. However, we did not find a qualitative indication that engagement with Vector increased during the shutdown period. This goes in line with findings from fellow researchers suggesting that commercially available service robots fail to engage their users in the longer term.

We develop a taxonomy that categorizes HRI failure types and their impact on trust to structure the broad range of knowledge contributions. We further identify research gaps in order to support fellow researchers in the development of trustworthy robots. Studying trust repair in HRI has only recently been given more interest and we propose a taxonomy of potential trust violations and suitable repair strategies to support researchers during the development of interaction scenarios. The taxonomy distinguishes four failure types: Design, System, Expectation, and User failures and outlines potential mitigation strategies. Based on these failures, strategies for autonomous failure detection and repair are presented, employing explanation, verification and validation techniques. Finally, a research agenda for HRI is outlined, discussing identified gaps related to the relation of failures and HR-trust.

In this article, we present results obtained from field trials with the Hobbit robotic platform, an assistive, social service robot aiming at enabling prolonged independent living of older adults in their own homes. Our main contribution lies within the detailed results on perceived safety, usability, and acceptance from field trials with autonomous robots in real homes of older users. In these field trials, we studied how 16 older adults (75 plus) lived with autonomously interacting service robots over multiple weeks. Robots have been employed for periods of months previously in home environments for older people, and some have been tested with manipulation abilities, but this is the first time a study has tested a robot in private homes that provided the combination of manipulation abilities, autonomous navigation, and non-scheduled interaction for an extended period of time. This article aims to explore how older adults interact with such a robot in their private homes. Our results show that all users interacted with Hobbit daily, rated most functions as well working, and reported that they believe that Hobbit will be part of future elderly care. We show that Hobbit’s adaptive behavior approach towards the user increasingly eased the interaction between the users and the robot. Our trials reveal the necessity to move into actual users’ homes, as only there, we encounter real-world challenges and demonstrate issues such as misinterpretation of actions during non-scripted human-robot interaction.

People form mental models about robots' behavior and intention as they interact with them. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of different interaction styles on self-efficacy in human-robot interaction (HRI), people's perception of the robot, and task engagement. We conducted a user study in which a social robot assists people verbally while building a house of cards. Data from our experimental study revealed that people engaged longer in the task while interacting with a robot that provides person related feedback than with a robot that gives no person or task related feedback. Moreover, people interacting with a robot with a person-oriented interaction style reported a higher self-efficacy in HRI, perceived higher agreeableness of the robot and found the interaction less frustrating, as compared to a robot with a task-oriented interaction style. This suggests that a robot's interaction style can be considered as a key factor for increasing people's perceived self-efficacy in HRI, which is essential for establishing trust and enabling Human-robot collaboration.

Socially assistive agents, be it virtual avatars or robots, need to engage in social interactions with humans and express their internal emotional states, goals, and desires. In this work, we conducted a comparative study to investigate how humans perceive emotional cues expressed by humanoid robots through five communication modalities (face, head, body, voice, locomotion) and examined whether the degree of a robot's human-like embodiment affects this perception. In an online survey, we asked people to identify emotions communicated by Pepper - a highly human-like robot and Hobbit - a robot with abstract humanlike features. A qualitative and quantitative data analysis confirmed the expressive power of the face, but also demonstrated that body expressions or even simple head and locomotion movements could convey emotional information. These findings suggest that emotion recognition accuracy varies as a function of the modality, and a higher degree of anthropomorphism does not necessarily lead to a higher level of recognition accuracy. Our results further the understanding of how people respond to single communication modalities and have implications for designing recognizable multimodal expressions for robots.

In this paper we present the Triple-A Model intended as a framework for researchers and developers to incorporate ethics in the user-and robot-centered design of social companion robots. The purpose of the model is to help identifying potential ethical risks in the implementation of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) scenarios. We base our model on three interaction levels, which companion robots can offer: Assistance, Adaptation, and Attachment (Triple-A). Every single interaction level has its specific potential ethical risks, which can be addressed during the robot development phase. However, we especially focus on the prominent ethical risks of long-term human-robot attachment and its implications on human-robot relationships. We discuss the practical use and the theoretical foundation of the Triple-A model which is well-grounded in the social role theory from sociology and the human cognitive-mnestic structure from cognitive science.

Robots are an increasingly discussed solution for assistance of seniors. Importance of testing natural interaction therefore becomes crucial. This paper presents first results of a study with an autonomous mobile social service robot prototype that was deployed in 18 private households of senior adults aged 75 years and older for a total of 371 days. Findings show that utility met the users' expectations. However, the robot was rather seen as a toy instead of being supportive for independent living. Furthermore, despite of an emergency function of the robot, perceived safety did not increase. Reasons for this might be the good health conditions of our users, a lack of technological robustness and slow performance of the prototype. However, users believed that a market ready version of the robot would be vital for supporting people who are more fragile and more socially isolated.

Robots are more and more leaving our labs and entering natural interaction settings, such as homes, care facilities, factories, kindergartens, museums, and many more. In the HRI research community, we are aware of all the challenges involved in studying autonomously behaving agents “in the wild”. In order “not to go wild” we want to discuss best practices as well as pitfalls in studying robots in natural interaction settings. Specifically, we want to focus on challenges in the development of systems for everyday usage in peoples' homes and on challenges in evaluating these systems in the wild, especially with regard to long-term interaction. We want to discuss and explore common and new methodological approaches to study HRI outside the lab, and collect recommendations for fellow researchers. In tandem, we want to reflect our visions for the “new era of socially capable robots” and how we as robot developers and researchers imagine them to integrate into the fabrics of our everyday life.

Standardized metrics for assessing the success of robots is a necessity for a research field to compare and validate results. The Godspeed Questionnaire Series (GQS) is one of the most frequently used questionnaires in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) with over 160 citations as of October 2014. In this paper, we present a meta analysis of studies that used the GQS. The HRI community uses a large variety of robotic platforms and only the NAO robot seems to be used by multiple research groups. A qualitative meta analysis of 18 NAO studies reveals accumulated findings on perceived intelligence, likability, and anthropomorphism, but also reveals contradictions on how the robot's behaviour and task context impact GQS ratings. The paper closes with a reflection on how added value of data analysis and presentation could be achieved for the HRI community in future.

Robots caring for the older population in care facilities and at home is an ongoing theme in HRI research. Research projects on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of these projects have the overall ambitious goal to increase the well-being of older adults and to enable them to stay at home as long as possible. In this workshop we want to reflect whether the HRI community is trapped in stereotypes when it comes to socially assistive robots for older adults' Therefore we want to gather and compare findings from user needs analysis, user evaluation studies, as well as interaction scenarios and functionalities of existing care robots. Are our results suggesting similar scenarios? Do older end users in all countries have similar needs and desires when it comes to assistive robots? What are the challenges and opportunities for future assistive robots (maybe for those we develop for ourselves when we belong to the older population?) also on an ethical and legal level? In this workshop we want to escape the stereotype trap what socially assistive robots should do. Can socially assistive robots solve the aging population problem on a societal and individual level? Are older people in general technology opponents? Will robotic helpers be accepted in the home as long as they pretend to be social actors.

When we think of service robots for public spaces, we often consider human-like systems that socially interact with users in short-term and dynamically changing scenarios. Many design assumptions exist for this type of robot, but what about for a service robot that needs to interact with people in a very task/role-oriented manner? This paper presents a research-through-design approach, which explores the idea of a "luggage-carrying robot guide" for train stations which supports travellers. Contrary to the classical paper describing the requirements, design, implementation, and evaluation of the robot, this work presents an exploratory design study. An interdisciplinary team composed of two industrial designers, a roboticist, and a social scientist performed a study with users to establish a design space for the aforementioned service robot.

When living together in a household with a socially assistive robot, it can happen that the robot disturbs its owner by offering a service. One might argue that a social robot should act according to the social norms people expect of each other, but still then disturbances of daily routines are a challenging endeavor to address. We conducted a preliminary user study in which we explored four different disturbing behaviors the socially assistive robot HOBBIT showed, while the user was focusing on a different primary task. We used the BEHAVE measurement set to evaluate the attitudinal and behavioral responses of the users, which disturbance distracted the user the most from his/her primary task and how the disturbance affected the overall attitudinal response towards the robot. Interestingly, our results showed that the disturbing behavior did not heavily negatively impact the assessment of the robot and that not all types of disturbance did distract the users with the same intensity.

The teacher-learner constellation is a special one in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), as it can essentially improve intuitive interaction with robots. In a 2 (background: programmer vs. non-programmer) × 3 (teacher: self vs. believed other vs. other) between participants experiment (n=48, counter-balanced in gender), participants kinesthetically taught a humanoid NAO robot a specific behavior, which the robot had to execute afterwards. Next, participants downloaded a taught behavior to the NAO and were told that the executed behavior either is (1) the one they previously taught (self), (2) the one someone else taught, but actually it was their own (believed other), or (3) the one someone else taught (other). We were interested in two main aspects: (1) whether programmers and non-programmers show differences in their teaching behavior and the perception of the teaching workload and (2) whether participants show a greater self-extension and trust into a robot they taught themselves over a robot they believed someone else taught. The study revealed that the teaching style independently of the background extends in the behavior execution time. Programmers showed a higher perceived workload than non-programmers. Differences in trust could not be found, but a self-extension effect was observed that people showed greater self-extension into a robot they taught themselves. Implications for Human-Robot Interaction are discussed.

Social roles are a design option for robots that behave in accordance with user expectations. We believe that robots have to exceed stereotypical role behaviors and dynamically provide roles that suit the people's living conditions in order to achieve long-term acceptance. We are introducing a new user-focused design method to develop social role repertoires for adaptive human-robot interaction (HRI). The method consists of five sequential steps: (1) user group and application scenario identification; (2) acquisition of users' mental associations; (3) derivation of role traits; (4) prioritization of these traits; and (5) synthesis of an adaptive social role repertoire. We tested our method with two specific user groups: elder adults living at home and those living in care facilities. The results reveal basic role concepts and specific preference clusters in each user group. The empirically based clusters are suitable for the parameterizations and development of robots with adaptive social roles.

Maintaining machines in semiconductor factories is a challenging task that, so far, is not sufficiently supported by mobile interactive technology. This paper describes the early development of a maintainer support system. Our goal was to develop a user-experience prototype, which consists of a mobile and a situated interface, to support maintenance activities and the coordination between maintainers and shift-leads. The interfaces are meant to reduce the amount of information and to improve awareness for defective equipment. Efforts described in this paper include the development of a conceptual user experience prototype, following an iterative user-centered design approach. Based on the requirements analysis, an initial mock-up of both interfaces was developed and later on discussed with maintainers in a workshop. With an interactive Wizard of Oz (WOz) prototype we examined the cooperative aspect as well as user experience factors (e.g., distraction, trust, usability) in a simulated factory environment.

To enhance successful cooperation in human-robot collaboration tasks, many factors have to be considered. We assume, that for specific levels of task complexity, there is always one complementing input modality which increases the corresponding user satisfaction and performance. In order to identify the ideal mix of these elements, we present two experiments in this paper. The first study was in a public space and the second in a controlled laboratory environment. Besides investigating the correlation of task complexity and input modality, we explored, whether the appearance of the robot also has an impact, within the lab environment. We identified strong interdependencies between task complexity and input modalities. Specifically with hard tasks, differences in performance and satisfaction were often highly significant. Additionally we found, that the perceived task complexity was strongly dependent on the cognitive workload, driven by the used input modality, which also emphasized the strong coherency of these factors. Regarding the influence of the appearance of the robot, we found, that the human-like shape increases users' self confidence, to be able to solve a task without help.

This paper reports about a User Experience (UX) study on industrial robotic arms in the context of a semiconductor factory cleanroom. The goal was to find out (1) if there is a difference in the UX between robots used over years with a strict security perimeter (robot A) and a newly installed robot without security perimeter (robot B), and (2) if the UX ratings of the new robot change over time. Therefore, a UX questionnaire was developed and handed out to the operators working with these robots. The first survey was conducted one week after the deployment of robot B (n=23), the second survey (n=21) six months later. Thereby, we found that time is crucial for experiencing human-robot interaction. Our results showed an improvement between the first and second measurement of UX regarding robot B. Although robot A was significantly better rated than robot B in terms of usability, general UX, cooperation, and stress, we assume that the differences in UX will decrease gradually with prolonged interaction.

When in a human environment, one might expect that a social robot would act according to the social norms people expect of each other. When someone does not adhere to a prevalent social norm, people usually feel threatened and disturbed. Thus, insight is needed into what is perceived as socially normative behavior for robots. We conducted an experiment in which an agent approached a participant in order to determine the effect of personal space invasion. We manipulated the agent-type (human/robot) and the approach speed (slow/fast) of the agent towards the participant. Unexpectedly, our results show that the participants displayed more compensatory behavior in the robot condition than in the human condition. We consider this response toward personal space invasion as indication that people react in a similar way to robots as they do to humans, however with more intensity.

This paper suggests new methodology for measuring User Experience in HRI. We suggest using implicit attitude to predict User Experience (Affect). Therefore we show a first validation study. The study uses short videos of a robot (IURO - Interactive Urban Robot) approaching a person and asking for the. IURO either approached a walking or a standing person. We measured people's implicit attitude towards the robot with the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). The results show that a walking person being approached by the robot evolves an implicitly more negative attitude in the observing participant whereas corresponding questionnaire items showed no difference in attitude for the approach behaviour. We conclude from these results that measuring implicit attitude in HRI is valuable for the evaluation of the User Experience of a robot.

The Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research field has developed more and more over the past 10 to 20 years. It is still a relatively young community, which is in the process of developing its characteristics, such as being interdisciplinary, innovative, responsible, technical, and many others. Similarly, like in the development of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community, being interdisciplinary is essential, but if we have a look on the current situation, HCI became more of an autonomous discipline nowadays. Where is the HRI community heading to in this respect? This paper should reflect in accordance to the "epistemic living spaces" concept on some stereotypical statements by researchers working in HRI. The reflection shows that in three phases of a researcher's career (orientation, positioning, and stabilizing and expanding) show a tendency towards the discipline and away from interdisciplinary work and that the forth phase (attachment) needs to be strengthened, independently of disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches.

The results from an empirical study on the impact of a robot's approach trajectories on its social acceptance are presented. An online survey presenting short videos of a robot (IURO - Interactive Urban RObot) approaching a person in a public space and asking for help was shown to the users. IURO either approached a walking or standing person. The results show that walking participants preferred to be approached from the front left or front right direction rather than frontally. However, when they are standing all three approach directions were acceptable.

In this paper we report about a methodological approach to cooperatively evaluate the usability of two different teach pendants for teaching a robotic arm. Two case studies were conducted to compare an already established teach pendant with a novel prototype which applies a different interaction paradigm. Involved in these studies were the company which produces the teach pendant (our industrial partner) and two clients of this company (one in the automotive sector, the other one in the injection modeling sector). We describe the cooperation in this project in detail, how the industrial partners were involved, and our approach to enhance the integration of usability studies in the life cycle of their industrial robotic products. Upon conducting these case studies in the industrial context we come to understand bit by bit the interplay of industrial robots in a better way and how we could affect user centered design (UCD) of real life robotic products with our work.

It is the aim of our research to explore how multimodal feedback can help a robot to carry out itinerary requests effectively and satisfactory for a human interaction partner. We conducted two studies to evaluate the feedback setup of the Interactive Urban Robot (IURO), which navigates through public space autonomously and finds its way by asking pedestrians for directions. In a Wizard-of-Oz (WOz) experiment with novice users, different feedback modalities and various combinations of them were tested against each other to ascertain the ideal setup of the robot. Subsequently, a cognitive walkthrough with HRI experts was performed to validate the results from the experiment. The results from both studies show that for itinerary requests verbal feedback is most prominent but other feedback modalities may support the conversation by providing reassurance or positive emotions.

This paper reports on the analysis of video footage of a human-robot study in public place regarding context factors that significantly influence the interaction. Therefore, a coding scheme was developed which was later used to analyze the video footage of the human-robot study. To ensure the validity of the coding, the video footage was coded independently by two students and afterwards the Cohen's Kappa was calculated to ensure the intercoder reliability. This calculation served as a basis for the creation of the first context model which shows factors that influence the interaction. This approach could show that it is possible to extract valid context factors and to create a context model based on video annotation. These factors should then be further tested in lab-based studies to get a better understanding of how they affect the human-robot interaction.

The paper presents the first step of a user-centered design process for a robot designated to operate in urban public space. A participatory design workshop was conducted to challenge the anthropomorphic design approach assumed by the designers and elicit user requirements for the design. In contrast to the expectations, the results show a tendency towards a preference of a non-anthropomorphic design.

The 2011 HRI Pioneers Workshop will be conducted in conjunction with the 2011 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The 2011 HRI Pioneers Workshop will provide a forum for graduate students and postdocs to learn about the current state of HRI, to present their work and to network with one another and with select senior researchers in a setting that is less formal and more interactive than the main conference. Workshop participants will discuss important issues and open challenges in the field, encouraging the formation of collaborative relationships across disciplines and geographic boundaries.

To analyze the formula for success of human communication, we examined dialogs between human interactors who were asking for directions in public place and extracted those elements that are responsible for making a dialog succeed or fail. Then, we tried to rate the elements according to the grade of their influence. Based on this rating and on the Shannon & Weaver model of communication, we created a communication structure for successful human-robot communication on which further research may be based to make human-robot communication as effective as possible.

A previously conducted study on human-human communication in the context of itinerary requests in public space resulted in “feedback” being the most powerful influencing factor regarding the successfulness of conversations between humans. In this paper, we report on a subsequently performed Wizard-of-Oz (WOz) experiment that applied the results from the human-human study to human-robot interaction. The participants interacted with a Nao robot in a cardboard model town, where the robot asked them for directions to a specific destination. It was the aim of this experiment to validate the importance of adequately timed feedback in human-robot communication. The experiment could show that feedback is a crucial factor for successful human-robot interaction in the context of asking for directions. Adequately timed and appropriately deployed feedback fosters a vivid and natural flow of communication.

This paper reports about a human-robot interaction field trial conducted with the autonomous mobile robot ACE (Autonomous City Explorer) in a public place, where the ACE robot needs the support of human passers-by to find its way to a target location. Since the robot does not possess any prior map knowledge or GPS support, it has to acquire missing information through interaction with humans. The robot thus has to initiate communication by asking for the way, and retrieves information from passers-by showing the way by gestures (pointing) and marking goal positions on a still image on the touch screen of the robot. The aims of the field trial where threefold: (1) Investigating the aptitude of the navigation architecture, (2) Evaluating the intuitiveness of the interaction concept for the passers-by, (3) Assessing people's willingness to support the ACE robot in its task, i.e. assessing the social acceptability. The field trial demonstrates that the architecture enables successful autonomous path finding without any prior map knowledge just by route directions given by passers-by. An additional street survey and observational data moreover attests the intuitiveness of the interaction paradigm and the high acceptability of the ACE robot in the public place.

This article reports on the results of a user study that investigates the perceived usability of naïve users conducting two navigation tasks with the HOAP-3 robot. In this user study, the robot was controlled via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that enabled the users to navigate the robot in the physical environment. The main goal of the user study was to gain insights on the question if users assign usability issues mainly to the robot, the GUI, or both. The participants performed two tasks: (1) navigating the robot through a maze to find the exit, (2) navigating the robot through the maze to find an object. The user study was supplemented by the think aloud technique and the SUS questionnaire to investigate usability aspects. Furthermore, task duration and task completion were measured. The results stress that the users rated the overall usability of the navigation rather positive. They identified usability problems for both, the GUI and the robot itself. The participants made more suggestions for improving the interface than for improvement of the robot. A reflection on the think aloud data revealed, however, three underlying principles (“feeling of distance”, “lack of orientation”, and “lack of control” ) for the usability problems that were independent of the assignment to the GUI and the robot.

Usability inspection methods like cognitive walkthroughs and guideline-based evaluations of robotic systems find more and more usage in the design of human-robot interaction. However, due to the fact that robots can be used in a variety of different scenarios, applying these methods to robots is rather difficult. Expert evaluation methods like heuristic evaluations thus need a methodological adaptation to be reasonably applied for human-robot interaction scenarios. We propose a methodological adaptation of remote heuristic evaluation based on video scenarios. To investigate this methodological adaptation we conducted a heuristic evaluation case study based on six different video scenarios with three different robots. Traditional heuristic evaluation data was gathered (number of found usability problems and severity rankings of the problems) and additionally a feedback questionnaire on the method itself was distributed to the participating expert evaluators. We could show that video-based remote heuristic evaluations conducted by interdisciplinary expert evaluators are a valuable approach to detect usability problems in human-robot interaction design in an early development phase.

This article reports on a user study conducted to asses the credibility of a humanoid robot. The study set-up was based on the Monty Hall Problem. Overall 13 people between the ages of 19 and 84 took part in the study (7 male and 6 female). The experiment was set up as a card-game where the participant had to guess which of the three cards shows a price. At one point of the experiment the robot advised the participant to change his/her mind and choose another card. During the user study the participants had to fill in a questionnaire on their level of certainty about their choice and the credibility of the robot. The results showed a significant correlation between the believability of the robot and the certainty in the decision made. Furthermore, the outcomes showed differences between participants who followed the robot's advise and participants who did not, regarding credibility, certainty of the decision made and the estimation whether the robot was helpful or not.

This paper reports on the evaluation of the ICRA 2008 Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Challenge. Five research groups demonstrated state-of-the-art work on HRI with a special focus on social and learning abilities. The demonstrations were rated by expert evaluators, in charge of awarding the prize, and 269 participants, i.e. 20 percent of the conference attendees through a standardized questionnaire (semantic differential). The data was analyzed with respect to six independent variables: expert evaluators vs. attendees, nationality of participants, origin region of the demo, age, gender and knowledge level of the attendees. Conference attendees tended to give higher scores for Social Skills, General Impression, and Overall Score than the expert evaluators. Irrespectively of the level of knowledge, age, and gender, conference attendees rated all demos relatively homogeneously. However, a comparative analysis of the conference attendees's ratings nationality-wise showed that demonstrations were rated differently depending on the region of origin. Conference attendees for the USA and Asian countries tended to rate demos from the same country of origin more frequently and more positively.

Effective collaboration between robots and humans is not only a question of interface design and usability, but also of user experience and social acceptance. To investigate these aspects for Human-Robot Collaboration with the HRP-2 robot, two video-based focus groups enhanced with creative stimuli were conducted. The following research question was addressed: Is the HRP-2 robot perceived differently in an autonomous collaboration condition compared to a tele-operated collaboration condition, in terms of social acceptance and user experience?The results show that participants in general are open to a humanoid robot as working partner as long as there is a clear distinction between a human and a robot, in terms of tasks and working procedures. Furthermore, participants stated a positive attitude toward the remotely-controlled HRP-2 robot.

In this article a field trial is presented that explores shopping information and navigation strategies and evaluates if the spectacles camera is beneficial as mobile device for this research context. The spectacles camera, a small camera installed in a pair of glasses, was used as exploration instrument in a shopping mall where passers-by could take part in a field trial on a voluntary basis. The goal of the field trial was twofold: 1.) Gaining insights on shoppers' behavior. 2.) Investigating the feasibility of the spectacles camera as exploration instrument. The field trial gave insights on navigation patterns and constituting elements of interest points of participants' shopping behavior, while the spectacles camera proved its value for investigating shopping strategies in the field.

This article reports on the results of a user study investigating the satisfaction of nave users conducting two learning by demonstration tasks with the HOAP-3 robot. The main goal of this study was to gain insights on how to ensure a successful as well as satisfactory experience for nave users. The participants performed two tasks: They taught the robot to (1) push a box, and to (2) close a box. The user study was accompanied by three pre-structured questionnaires, addressing the users' satisfaction with HOAP-3, the users' affect toward the robot caused by the interaction, and the users' attitude towards robots. Furthermore, a retrospective think aloud was conducted to gain a better understanding of what influences the users' satisfaction in learning by demonstration tasks. A high task completion and final satisfaction rate could be observed. These results stress that learning by demonstration is a promising approach for nave users to learn the interaction with a robot Moreover, the short term interaction with HOAP-3 led to a positive affect, higher than the normative average on half of the female users.

Several variations of methodological approaches are used to study the social acceptance in human-robot interaction. Due to the introduction of robots in the home, working practice and usage typically informing the design of new forms of technology are missing. Studying social acceptance in human-robot interaction thus needs new methodological concepts. We propose a so called breaching experiment with additional ethnographic observation to close this gap. To investigate the methodological concept we have been conducting a field trial on a public place. We gathered feedback using questionnaires, in order to estimate whether this method can be beneficially to evaluate social acceptance. We could show that breaching experiments can be a useful method to investigate social acceptance in the field.