UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

      "Human-robot Interactions from the Ethological Perspective:
        How can dog-human companionship inform social robotics"

                      Dr. Gabriella Lakatos

     (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire;
      Comparative Ethology Research Group of the Hungarian Academy 
         of Sciences and Eötvös Loránd University,  Hungary)

                     5 February 2014 (Wednesday)
                          1 pm -2 pm

                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                       Seminar Room C152

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available

Abstract:

In the last few years there was an increasing interest in building
companion robots that interact in a socially acceptable way with
humans. In order to interact in a meaningful way a robot has to
convey intentionality and emotions of some sort in order to increase
believability.

The ethological approach suggests that human-robot interaction should
be considered as a specific form of inter-specific interaction and
that human-animal interaction can provide a useful biological model
for designing social robots. Dogs proved to be an especially promising
biological model since during the domestication process they were able
to adapt to the human social environment and to participate in complex
social interactions.

In this talk I am going to present different experimental studies, in
which we tested the readability of the dog inspired behaviour implemented
in social robots. Results of these studies demonstrate that applying
human-dog interaction as a model for designing robots' social behaviour
towards the users we can achieve believable and socially acceptable
human-robot interactions in case of different robot embodiments. In
addition, the dog-inspired social behaviour proved to be a suitable
medium for making people attribute intentions and emotional states to
non-humanoid robots.


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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.stca.herts.ac.uk