By the end of this course, the student:
- can program a robot for human-robot interaction by implementing basic robot perception and reasoning capabilities, and designing robotic communicative behaviour.
- can design robot communicative behaviours that are effective at their intended goal using novel design methods.
- can explain the principles of verbal and nonverbal communication for robot design.
- can evaluate the designed robot behaviours by utilising human-robot communication paradigms and metrics.
- can select and apply responsible design methods to design human-robot communication ethically and effectively.
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When robots are to perform tasks in human-centered environments, they are required to communicate with users or other people they encounter. This communication could be through voice, but also through other non-verbal means, such as through gestures, facial expressions, gaze direction, or motion. One of the challenges of robot communication is to make sure that the person understands the robot's intent. Depending on the environment the robot is to operate in, as well as the expressive modalities of the robot, a choice will have to be made on how the robot should communicate. Designing robot communicative behaviour is challenging, as you will often have to deal with the robots that have limits as to how they can communicate. For instance, many robots will have only a couple degrees of freedom in their head (if they even have one), or their arms. How then do you reliably convey intent through behaviour?
This course offers insight into what communication is about, the state-of-the-art in robot communication design and evaluation, and developing interaction between human and robot. At the start of the course, students will form groups and start implementing basic perception modules (e.g., speech recognition, computer vision) that form the foundation for human-robot interactions developed later in the course. Next students will be given three challenges. In each, they must design, implement, and evaluate interaction between the robot and a person, using certain expressive modalities. The third and final challenge will be presented by the students. Additionally, the students will write an individual report on this final challenge.
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