UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		 COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			      presents

	  "Drum-mate: A Human-Humanoid Drumming Experience"


		       Dr. Hatice Kose-Bagci
	   (Adaptive Systems Research Group, School of Computer
		Science, University of Hertfordshire)

		    27 February 2008 (Wednesday)

			Lecture Theatre E350
		     Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			     3 - 4 pm

	       Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.

		    Everyone is Welcome to Attend


Abstract:

In this talk, we will present two exploratory studies investigating a
drumming experience with Kaspar, a humanoid child-sized robot, and
adult participants. In the first work, our aim is not to have Kaspar
just replicate the human partner's drumming, but to engage with the
human in 'social manner' using head gestures in a call and response
turn-taking interaction and to assess the impact of non-verbal gestures
on the interaction. Results from the first implementation of a
human-robot interaction experiment are presented and analysed
qualitatively (in terms of participants' subjective experiences) and
quantitatively (concerning the drumming performance of the human-robot
pair). The interaction experience is discussed in terms of imitation,
deterministic turn-taking, and the effect of gender differences.

In the second part of our talk, we will present an exploratory study 
investigating emergent turn-taking in our drumming game. In this work, 
our aim is to have turn-taking and role switching which is not 
deterministic as in the first work, but emerging from the social 
interaction between the human and the humanoid. Therefore the robot 
is not 'following' and imitating the human, but could be the leader 
in the game and being imitated by the human. As in the first work, 
results will be presented and analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. 
The results would be discussed in terms of the affects of timing, 
emergent turn-taking and role-switching.

We will see some videos from our experiments presenting different cases
and discuss the effect of simple gestures and turn-taking models on the
human-humanoid interaction.

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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq