As human-robot interaction becomes more commonplace, roboticists should understand how robot behaviors are perceived by people to avoid misunderstandings. In our lab, we are exploring the use of a Cozmo as an interactive, break-taking aid in workplace settings. Before our interactive aid can be released into the wild, we must...
Collective robotic systems are biologically-inspired and exhibit behaviors found in spatial swarms (e.g., fish), colonies (e.g., ants), or a combination of both (e.g., bees). Collective robotic system popularity continues to increase due to their apparent global intelligence and emergent behaviors. Many applications can benefit from the incorporation of collectives, including...
A focus group format was used to investigate and identify favorable and unfavorable communications between two strangers, an AAC (Augmentative/Alternative Communication) device user and their communication partner. The principal interest was in the feedback gained from an ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) support group at the Salem Hospital which included participants...
The study focuses on how to use entertainment method approach to prompt people with best practices for COVID safety. During COVID times, there have been many robots deployed in public places such as social distancing enforcer or a robot that provide facial masks, but few investigations have been done to...
This dissertation focuses on personal privacy in human-robot interaction, which we call "privacy-sensitive robotics." Our understanding of "privacy" is very broad, including not just information privacy but also physical, psychological, and social privacy. We begin by surveying the scholarly literature on privacy and talking about why it applies to interactions...
Numerous diseases and injuries can limit a person's ability to perform everyday tasks -- things like getting dressed, bathing, and eating. Anything that requires physical activity can be affected; even simple things like turning on the lights can become difficult or impossible. Until recently, the only way for a person...
There is a strong interest in the robotics community in learning how humans grasp and manipulate objects, partly because robots need to operate in human environments and partly because humans are currently much better in physical interaction tasks than robots. This thesis seeks to identify the human heuristics for grasping...
This thesis aims to determine the impact that Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices have on social interactions, and then improves the AAC user experience through a user focus design process. AAC devices enable people who cannot speak to communicate with others. Unfortunately, they are tedious to use and make...
Robots have the potential to protect health care workers, provide patient care, and ultimately save lives in infectious disease outbreaks. Nevertheless, infectious disease outbreak scenarios present unique technological and social challenges for robotics. This work explores what robots can and should do in the fight against infectious diseases. We present...
Rhizome is an information-centric model that uses different interaction methods than traditional desktop systems. I built Rhizome with the specific use case of sharing a photo to observe people using the Rhizome operating system (OS) shell and modern OS shells. The purpose of this is to measure the cognitive load...