Robotics and human-robot interaction (HRI) are growing fields that may benefit from an expanded perspective stimulated by more interdisciplinary contributions. One way to achieve this goal is to attract non-traditional students from the social sciences and humanities into these fields. This present paper describes two educational initiatives that focused on teaching non-engineering students about robotics and HRI. In one initiative, a group of younger students, including those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), received hands-on experience with robotics in a context that was not overly technical, while in the other initiative, college students in the social sciences and humanities learned about basic HRI concepts and developed robotics applications. Themes common to both initiatives were to reach non-technical students who are not traditional targets for robotics education and to focus their learning on creating interactive sequences for robots based on key HRI design considerations rather than on the underlying mechanical and electrical details related to how those sequences are enacted inside the robot. Both initiatives were successful in terms of producing desired learning outcomes and fostering participant enjoyment.

With an increasing number of organizations allowing personal smart phones onto their networks, considerable security risk is introduced. The security risk is exacerbated by the tremendous heterogeneity of the personal mobile devices and their respective installed pool of applications. Furthermore, by virtue of the devices not being owned by the organization, the ability to authoritatively enforce organizational security polices is challenging. As a result, a critical part of organizational security is the ability to drive user security behavior through either on-device mechanisms or security awareness programs. In this paper, we establish a baseline for user security behavior from a population of over one hundred fifty smart phone users. We then systematically evaluate the ability to drive behavioral change via messaging centered on morality, deterrence, and incentives. Our findings suggest that appeals to morality are most effective over time, whereas deterrence produces the most immediate reaction. Additionally, our findings show that while a significant portion of users are securing their devices without prior intervention, it is difficult to influence change in those who do not.

This report describes the development of a prototypical Wizard of Oz, graphical user interface to wirelessly control a small, humanoid robot (Aldebaran Nao) during a therapy session for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The Dynamically Operated Manually Executed Robot interface (DOMER) enables an operator to initiate pre-developed behavior sequences for the robot as well as access the text-to-speech capability of the robot in real-time interactions between children with ASD and their therapist. Preliminary results from a pilot study suggest that the interface enables the operator to control the robot with sufficient fidelity such that the robot can provide positive feedback, practice social dialogue, and play the game, "Simon Says" in a convincing and engaging manner.

There is recent evidence that males and females view robots differently, from the way robots are conceptualized, to the way humans respond when they interact with them. In this paper, we further explore gender-based differences in human-robot interaction. Moreover, we provide the first available evidence for sex-related differences in reactions to gendered synthetic voices that are either disembodied or physically embodied within a robot. Results indicate that physical embodiment and perceived entity gender may interact with human sex-related characteristics and pre-experimental attitudes in determining how people respond to artificial entities.

Social-psychological processes in humans will play an important role in long-term human-robot interactions. This study investigates people's perceptions of social presence in robots during (relatively) short interactions. Findings indicate that males tend to think of the robot as more human-like and accordingly show some evidence of "social facilitation" on an arithmetic task as well as more socially desirable responding on a survey administered by a robot. In contrast, females saw the robot as more machine-like, exhibited less socially desirable responding to the robot's survey, and were not socially facilitated by the robot while engaged in the arithmetic tasks. Various alternative accounts of these findings are explored and the implications of these results for future work are discussed.