UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

       "Robot-Mediated Interviews: A Robotic Intermediary
          for Facilitating Communication with Children"

                           Luke Wood
     (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire)

                     28 January 2015 (Wednesday)
                          1 pm -2 pm

                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                       Seminar Room D102

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available

Abstract:

Robots have been used in a variety of education, therapy or entertainment
contexts. This thesis introduces the novel application of using humanoid
robots for Robot-Mediated Interviews (RMIs). In the initial stages
of this research it was necessary to first establish as a baseline if
children would respond to a robot in an interview setting, therefore the
first study compared how children responded to a robot and a human in
an interview setting. Following this successful initial investigation,
the second study expanded on this research by examining how children
would respond to different types and difficulty of questions from a robot
compared to a human interviewer. Building on these studies, the third
study investigated how a RMI approach would work for children with special
needs. Following the positive results from the three studies indicating
that a RMI approach may have some potential, three separate user panel
sessions were organised with user groups that have expertise in working
with children and for whom the system would be potentially useful in their
daily work. The panel sessions gathered feedback on the previous studies
and resulted in a set of requirements to make a RMI approach feasible
for real world users. The feedback and requirements from the user groups
were considered and implemented in the system before conducting a final
field trial of the system with a potential real world user.

The results of the studies in this research reveal that the children
generally interacted with KASPAR in a very similar to how they interacted
with a human interviewer regardless of question type or difficulty. The
feedback gathered from experts working with children suggested that
the three most important and desirable features of a RMI system were:
reliability, flexibility and ease of use. The feedback from the experts
also indicated that a RMI system would most likely be used with children
with special needs. The final field trial with a potential real world
user illustrated that a RMI system could potentially be used effectively
outside of a research context and have real world implications with the
suggested further developments.


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