Time table

9:00 - 11:30 Demonstration setup (Visit possible)

11:30 - 11:40 Opening H. Ishiguro

11:40 - 12:00 Talk 1 H. Ishiguro, Android science

12:00 - 12:30 Talk 2 T. Kawahara, spoken dialogue system

12:30 - 13:00 Talk 3 Y. Yoshikawa, Human robot interaction

13:00 - 13:30 Invited Talk G. Sandini

13:30 - 14:30 Lunch

14:30 - 15:15 Demonstration

15:15 - 15:45 Talk session

15:45 - 16:30 Poster session

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - 18:00 Panel discussion

18:00 End

Contributed researches

1. Alberto Sanfeliu and Anais Garrell,
   • [Title] "Human companion for accompaniment, searching and looking for people in outdoor urban areas"
   • [Abstract] We will explain our experience in ground and aerial robots are interacting with persons, accompanying side-by-side, searching and looking for them in an outdoor urban environment, where low dynamic objects are moving around, for example persons, bicycles, and other objects.
2. Shohei Akita, Satoru Satake, Masahiro Shiomi, Michita Imai, and Takayuki Kanda, [PDF]
   • [Title] "Social Coordination between Tele-operated Robot and Human"
   • [Abstract] People engage in social coordination without explicitly communicating when they are conflicting over spatial resources, e.g., a shop clerk who yields to customers the best place to view products. In this study, we proposed a method that achieves such social coordination with a robot. Our idea is that the social coordination between two agents can be represented as utility-maximizing behavior for joint utility rather than just by a single agent utility. That is, given that each agent’s reasonable behavior can be represented as utility-maximizing behavior for single agent utility, we model each agent’s plans for himself as well as for the partner agent. Moreover, superiority relationships exist in this joint-utility computation. Since each agent knows such superiority relationships, social coordination can be modeled as utility-yielding behavior based on informed superiority. We specifically focus on looking-together situations for which we developed a utility model. We conducted an experiment in a situation where a tele-operated robot and a customer together look at products in a shop environment. Our experimental results show that our proposed method enables the robot to socially coordinate spatial resources, yielding significantly more thoughtful, less-self-centered, and appropriate impressions than the alternate robot.
3. Daniel M. Lafaro, Dylan Wallace, and Donald Sofge, [PDF]
   • [Title] "Shibboleth-based Trust Enhancement Between Humans and Humanoid Robots Using Gesture and Contact Focused Dialog"
   • [Abstract] This work shows the initial progress towards providing an autonomous dialog via individualized instantaneous tactile interactions with a humanoid robot's end-effector and a human's hand. This action is also known as a "secret handshake" that consists of combinations/permutations of "fist bumps." In this work we propose and describe an experiment that explores if this autonomous dialog increases empathy between the human and the robot. We believe that empathy and comradery between and within human-robot teams is the key to co-robotics. The theory is that the physical dialog that the human and robot share during their "secret handshake" will help create a special bond if the user knows that the robot remembers who they are and that the "secret handshake" is unique to the human-robot pair. The formation of the shibboleth will help us determine if a bond is formed between the humans and the robots.
4. Salvatore M. Anzalone, Sofiane Boucenna, Soizic Gauthier, Dominique Archambault, Mohamed Chetouani, David Cohen, [PDF]
   • [Title] "Social Artificial Agents in Neurodevelopmental Disorders"
   • [Abstract] Social artificial agents recently emerged as instruments for cognitive rehabilitation of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as assessment tool of their socio-cognitive abilities. In this paper we present the use of social robots and virtual agents for the characterization of joint attention, imitation and perspective taking in the presence of such disorders. We show how they can be used to elicit behaviors on children and reveal social deficits on such pathologies.
5. Kazuki Sakai, Yutaka Nakamura, Yuichiro Yoshikawa, Shingo Kano, and Hiroshi Ishiguro, [PDF]
   • [Title] "Dialogal robot that estimates user's preferences by using subjective similarity"
   • [Abstract] To build a close relationship with user, it is important for robots to be able to perform dialogue. In this paper, we developed a question and answer type dialogue system that robot asked user's preferences estimated based on subjective similarity. We designed a wording rule of each interrogation sentence according to the estimate of the user's preference on the corresponding item. For estimating user's preference of items, we used Gaussian process regression in which kernel function is replaced by the subjective similarity obtained by the infinite relational model. We then show some typical behavior of the robot by our developed system.