In this paper we show empirically that highly humanlike robots make thoughts of death more accessible, leading to perceptions of uncanniness and eeriness of such robots. Rather than reducing the humanlikeness of robots, our research suggests the addition of emotion displays to decrease a sense of uncanniness. We show that a highly humanlike robot displaying emotions in a social context reduces death-thought accessibility (DTA), which in turn reduces uncanniness. In a pre-test with N = 95 participants, we established that not all humanoid robots elicit thoughts of death and that the extent to which a robot appears humanlike may be linked to DTA. In our Main Study, N = 44 participants briefly interacted with a highly humanlike robotic head that either showed appropriate basic emotions or reacted by blinking. The display of emotions significantly reduced perceptions of uncanniness, which was mediated by a corresponding reduction in DTA. Implications for the design of humanoid robots are proposed.

Many modern software systems are implemented as client/server architectures, where a server handles multiple clients concurrently. Testing does not cover the outcomes of all possible thread and communication schedules reliably. Software model checking, on the other hand, covers all possible outcomes but is often limited to subsets of commonly used protocols and libraries. Earlier work in cache-based software model checking handles implementations using socket-based TCP/IP networking, with one thread per client connection using blocking input/output. Recently, servers using non-blocking, selector-based input/output have become prevalent. This paper describes our work extending the Java PathFinder extension net-iocache to such software, and the application of our tool to modern server software.

A rule-based visual language that controls kinematics is proposed. It is designed for visually describing realistic and reactive animations with real-time kinematic modeling. While the kinematics animates graphical objects to simulate continuous phenomena such as the expansion/contraction and free falling of objects, the rewriting system controls discontinuous behaviors such as changes in connectivity, creation/extinction, sudden changes in velocity, or user interactions. Kinematic as well as geometric conditions can trigger rules. Conversely, the rewriting system can change the targets' kinematic states such as velocity as well as geometrical relationships. Thus the kinematics and the rewriting systems cooperate. Using these techniques, kinematically modeled animation can enjoy on-the-fly re-composition controlled by events simply by adding graphical rules. To show this advantage, reactive GUIs and action games are built. Our approach also extends the notion of figure-rewriting from space to space-time.

High resolution touch screens and novel usage strategies have overcome earlier problems with parallax and inaccurate pointing. A study testing the utility of three touch screen strategies within the Hyperties hypertext environment was performed. This provided a replication and extension of an earlier touch screen strategy comparison that focused on small closely‐spaced targets. The experiment compared three touch screen strategies in three experimental tasks that reflect hypertext usage. The results showed that a strategy that only uses the initial impact with the touch screen causes the user to miss the target more than other touch strategies. A statistically significant difference in errors was found. Our results should encourage system implementers and touch screen hardware designers to support “touch mouse” strategies that enable cursor dragging on the touch screen surface.

A study comparing the speed, accuracy, and user satisfaction of three different touch screen strategies was performed. The purpose of the experiment was to evaluate the merits of the more intricate touch strategies that are possible on touch screens that return a continuous stream of touch data. The results showed that a touch strategy providing continuous feedback until a selection was confirmed had fewer errors than other touch strategies. The implications of the results for touch screens containing small, densely-packed targets were discussed.