UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		 COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			      presents

	     "Design Space for Robot Appearance and Behaviour
		     for Social Robot Companions"

		      Dr. Michael L. Walters
	     (Adaptive Systems Research Group, School of
	    Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire)

		    13 February 2008 (Wednesday)

			Lecture Theatre E351
		     Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			     3 - 4 pm

	       Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.

		    Everyone is Welcome to Attend


Abstract:

The study of interpersonal distances between Humans is called Proxemics.
An understanding of Human-Robot (HR) Proxemics and associated
non-verbal social behaviour is crucial for humans to accept robots as
companions or servants.  Many current robots have the ability to sense
and control for the distance of people and objects in their vicinity.
It is likely that attributes of robot appearance, behaviour, task
context and situation will affect the HR proxemic distances that people
will find comfortable between themselves and a robot.  This talk will
present findings from an empirical investigation into HR Proxemics.

The findings confirm, for mechanoid or humanoid robots, results that
have previously been found in the domain of human-computer interaction
(cf. Reeves & Nass, 1996), i.e. people seem to automatically treat
interactive artifacts socially. Evidence also confirms that humans
respect the interpersonal space of robots (cf. Breazeal, 2000) and that
HR proxemic behaviour exhibits some of the complexity and richness to
be found in human-human proxemic behaviour. An original empirical
human-robot proxemic framework is proposed in which the experimental
findings from the study can be unified in the wider context of
human-robot proxemics. This is seen as a necessary first step towards
the desired end goal of creating and implementing a working robot
proxemic system which can: a) exhibit socially acceptable social
spatial behaviour when interacting with humans, b) allow the robot to
interpret and gain additional valuable insight into a range of HR 
interaction situations from the relative proxemic behaviour of humans 
in the immediate area. Proposed future work concludes the presentation.


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