Applied Social Robotics - Building Interactive Robots with LEGO Mindstorms

Teaching Social Robotics is a requiring and challenging task due to the interdisciplinary of this research field. We think that it can not be taught in a solely theoretical manner. To help students to gain more interest in the topic and to foster their curiosity we restructured a paper club like lecture to create a bridge between a theoretical topic and practical applications. This paper describes our approach to create a lecture covering theory, methods and how to transfer those to applied informatics. Described is the given theoretical input and how students learn to transfer these to a robot they build on their own. We also evaluate how the new structure was accepted and what lessons can be learned for this lecture style.

[1]  Rosalind W. Picard.  Affective computing: (526112012-054) , 1997 .

[2]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Human perspective on affective robotic behavior: a longitudinal study , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[3]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. , 2007, Psychological review.

[4]  Illah R. Nourbakhsh,et al.  A survey of socially interactive robots , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[5]  Sara B. Kiesler,et al.  Human Mental Models of Humanoid Robots , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[6]  P. Petta,et al.  Computational models of emotion , 2010 .

[7]  Clifford Nass,et al.  The media equation - how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places , 1996 .

[8]  K. Upton,et al.  A modern approach , 1995 .

[9]  Dana Kulic,et al.  Measurement Instruments for the Anthropomorphism, Animacy, Likeability, Perceived Intelligence, and Perceived Safety of Robots , 2009, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[10]  E. Vesterinen,et al.  Affective Computing , 2009, Encyclopedia of Biometrics.

[11]  Tatsuya Nomura,et al.  The influence of people’s culture and prior experiences with Aibo on their attitude towards robots , 2006, AI & SOCIETY.

[12]  Aaron Powers,et al.  Matching robot appearance and behavior to tasks to improve human-robot cooperation , 2003, The 12th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2003. Proceedings. ROMAN 2003..

[13]  Mark J. Warshawsky,et al.  A Modern Approach , 2005 .

[14]  D. Norman.  Emotional design : why we love (or hate) everyday things , 2004 .

[15]  D. Feil-Seifer,et al.  Defining socially assistive robotics , 2005, 9th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, 2005. ICORR 2005..

[16]  Jodi Forlizzi,et al.  All robots are not created equal: the design and perception of humanoid robot heads , 2002, DIS '02.

[17]  M. Matarić,et al.  Benchmarks for evaluating socially assistive robotics , 2007 .

[18]  Ana Paiva,et al.  Social Robots for Long-Term Interaction: A Survey , 2013, International Journal of Social Robotics.

[19]  Etienne B. Roesch,et al.  A Blueprint for Affective Computing: A Sourcebook and Manual , 2010 .

[20]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Socially intelligent robots: dimensions of human–robot interaction , 2007, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[21]  Karl F. MacDorman,et al.  The Uncanny Valley [From the Field] , 2012, IEEE Robotics Autom. Mag..