Am I acceptable to you? Effect of a robot’s verbal language forms on people’s social distance from robots

This study is to examine the effect of robots’ language forms on people’s acceptance of robots. We applied a concept of social distance to measure people’s acceptance of robots. In an experiment, calling participants by name vs. not calling by name as well as the robot’s speech styles (familiar vs. honorific), were used to impose a verticality and horizontality of social relationships between participants and robots. After the conversation with a robot, participants rated the robot’s interpersonal traits and their comfortable approach distance to the robot, and their response to the robot during the experiment were analyzed. As a result, participants whom the robot called by their name perceived the robot as friendlier. They introduced themselves more actively, and were more intently focused on what the robot said. They asked the robot questions more frequently. Participants called by their names consequently approached the robot more closely than participants who were not called. An interaction effect was found between speech styles and whether names were used in regard to the perceived friendliness of robots, negative response to robots, and comfortable approach distance to robots. We discuss verbal interaction design for increasing people’s acceptance of robots.     

多移动机器人通信系统研究进展

鉴于通信是多机器人在联合工作时进行交互的主要途径,对国内外近年来多移动机器人通信系统的研究工作进行了总结.重点介绍了多移动机器人通信系统目前的研究现状和主要研究内容,包括通信方式、通信语言、通信拓扑、通信协议以及其他结合通信的多移动机器人协作研究.最后指出了多移动机器人通信系统未来的研究方向.     

Cultural Cues in Students' Computer‐Mediated Communication: Influences on E‐mail Style,Perception of the Sender,and Willingness to Help

Computer‐mediated communication among university students with different cultural backgrounds has become widespread. In this study, we examine how undergraduates (N = 130) react to cultural cues when responding to an e‐mail request for cooperation sent by a peer. Participants rated the sender's personality and stated their willingness to help. In the inquiry, 2 types of cultural cues were varied, resulting in a 2 × 2 factorial design: ethnicity (German vs. Chinese name) and communication style (Western vs. Asian). Results showed that participants aligned their responses to the communication style; however, the ethnicity cue influenced the wording of their response, their perception of the sender's personality and their willingness to help. Results are discussed regarding communication accommodation and social judgment theories.     

The boundary of racial prejudice: Comparing preferences for computer-synthesized White,Black, and robot characters

Humanoid social robots are predicted to interact with humans in various domains of social life as robot technology keeps advancing. One area for understanding the impact of robots on human society is interracial relations. Would robots constitute a nonhuman outgroup to trigger human ingroup favoritism which will confine the boundary of racial prejudice? A study (N = 105) assessed Whites’ rank-ordered preferences for 15 White, Black and robot computer-synthesized characters. Explicit racial prejudice positively predicted White versus Black character preferences for liking and as one’s avatar, virtual friend, and virtual tutor. The implicit racial prejudice, measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT), provided additional predictive utility for virtual friend. Among the 64 participants who reported minimal interest in robots, explicit racial prejudice negatively predicted preferences for Black over robot characters, showing a pattern that individuals with high prejudice preferred robot characters over Black ones. The results suggest alarming strength of racial prejudice and cast doubt on the notion of all-human ingroup favoritism in comparison to robots.     

Trust and online information-sharing in close relationships: a cross-cultural perspective

Culture has an essential influence on online trust building in close relationships. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of culture on interpersonal trust and online information-sharing in close relationships. A social dilemma game experiment was conducted by inviting close friend dyads from interdependent (that is, Chinese) or independent cultures (that is, German). Their trust and information-sharing performance in either online text chatting or face-to-face communication were examined. The results showed that in close relationships, Chinese participants had higher interpersonal trust and objective-sharing performance than German participants; Chinese trust and self-evaluated performance were not influenced by communication media; in comparison, German participants’ trust and self-evaluated performance significantly dropped online. The results confirmed that interdependent people are more relation-oriented in building their trust than independent people. Implications for online information-sharing management and the interface design were provided.     

Gradual spatial pattern formation of homogeneous robot group

This paper proposes a gradual formation of a spatial pattern for a homogeneous robot group. The autonomous formation of spatial pattern is one of key technologies for the advancement of cooperative robotic systems because a pattern formation can be regarded as function differentiation of a multi-agent system. When multiple autonomous robots without a given local task cooperatively work for a global objective, the function differentiation is the first and indispensable step. For example, each member of cooperative insects or animals can autonomously recognize own local tasks through mutual communication with local members. There were a lot of papers that reported a spatial pattern formation of multiple robots, but the global information was supposed to be available in their approaches. It is however almost impractical assumption for a small robot to be equipped with an advanced sensing system for global localization due to robot’s scale and sensor size. The local information-based algorithm for the pattern formation is desired even if each robot is not equipped with a global localization sensor.We therefore propose a gradual pattern formation algorithm, i.e., a group of robots improves complexity of their pattern from to a simple pattern to a goal pattern like a polygon. In the algorithm, the Turing diffusion-driven instability theory is used so that it could differentiate roles of each robot in a group based only on local information. In experiment, we demonstrate that robots can make a few polygon patterns from a circle pattern by periodically differentiating robot’s roles into a vertex or a side. We show utilities of the proposed gradual pattern formation algorithm for multiple autonomous robots based on local information through some experiments.     

Effects of information technologies,department characteristics and individual roles on improving knowledge sharing visibility: a qualitative case study

Knowledge sharing visibility (KSV) is a critical environmental factor which can reduce social loafing in knowledge sharing (KS). This is especially true in ICT-based KS in learning organisations. As such, it is imperative that we better understand how to design technology enabled knowledge management systems (KMS) to support high KSV. This article examines the impact of knowledge management technology functions (e.g. tracking, knowledge storing) on KSV through qualitative analysis of 16 semi-structured interviews with participants in a Chinese company. Impact and implications of use for their existing KMS are examined. This article also examined the effects of department characteristics (i.e. group size and task characteristics) and individual roles (i.e. employee positions) on the IT–KSV relationship. Results encourage applied statistical, tracking, knowledge distribution and knowledge storing functions for monitoring explicit KS, and suggest integration of visualised knowledge maps with communication tools (e.g. Instant Messenger (IM)) to support visibility for implicit KS. Findings also suggest that KM technologies are more salient on improving KSV in large department with routine tasks, and that low-level employees may have more positive attitude on accepting communication tools on sharing knowledge. Extension to use of Web 2.0 technologies (e.g. weblogs) in KMS is also explored.     

Systematic Review: Trust-Building Factors and Implications for Conversational Agent Design

ABSTRACT

Off-the-shelf conversational agents are permeating people’s everyday lives. In these artificial intelligence devices, trust plays a key role in users’ initial adoption and successful utilization. Factors enhancing trust toward conversational agents include appearances, voice features, and communication styles. Synthesizing such work will be useful in designing evidence-based, trustworthy conversational agents appropriate for various contexts. We conducted a systematic review of the experimental studies that investigated the effect of conversational agents’ and users’ characteristics on trust. From a full-text review of 29 articles, we identified five agent design-themes affecting trust toward conversational agents: social intelligence of the agent, voice characteristics and communication style, look of the agent, non-verbal communication, and performance quality. We also found that participants’ demographic, personality, or use context moderate the effect of these themes. We discuss implications for designing trustworthy conversational agents and responsibilities around on stereotypes and social norm building through agent design.     

Democracy in computer-mediated communication: Gender,communicative style,and amount of participation in professional listservs

This study examined the claim of democracy in computer-mediated communication with regard to amount of participation and communicative style of genders and the effect of topic of discussion on these aspects. To this aim, 300 randomly- chosen messages from two listservs (language testing and taxonomy) were coded for the number of female and male participants, frequency and length of messages, frequency of new topics, frequency of responses to each topic type and to the same and cross gender topics, stylistic features of females’ and males’ language, and frequency of flaming. For each aspect of analysis, χ² statistical test was applied to examine the significance of the differences between genders in and across the lists. The results indicated that given the amount of participation, the democracy claim was breached as male dominance and presence was more ubiquitous. However, the results supported the provision of a democratic platform as far as manner of participation is concerned since both genders presented common communicative needs and priorities and there was no support for differentiation of genders’ communicative styles. The findings promise implications for EFL/ESL education.     

Quantitative analysis of a certified e-mail protocol in mobile environments: A probabilistic model checking approach

Formal analysis techniques, such as probabilistic model checking, offer an effective mechanism for model-based performance and verification studies of communication systems’ behavior that can be abstractly described by a set of rules i.e., a protocol. This article presents an integrated approach for the quantitative analysis of the Certified E-mail Message Delivery (CEMD) protocol that provides security properties to electronic mail services. The proposed scheme employs a probabilistic model checking analysis and provides for the first time insights on the impact of CEMD’s error tolerance on computational and transmission cost. It exploits an efficient combination of quantitative analysis and specific computational and communication parameters, i.e., the widely used Texas Instruments TMS320C55x Family operating in an High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) mobile environment, where multiple CEMD participants execute parallel sessions with high bit error rates (BERs). Furthermore, it offers a tool-assistant approach for the protocol designers and analysts towards the verification of their products under varying parameters. Finally, this analysis can be also utilized towards reliably addressing cost-related issues of certain communication protocols and deciding on their cost-dependent viability, taking into account limitations that are introduced by hardware specifications of mobile devices and noisy mobile environments.     

Implicit Coordination with Shared Belief: A Heterogeneous Robot Soccer Team Case Study

A striking aspect of human coordination is that we achieve it with little or no communication. We achieve this implicit coordination by taking the perspective of others and inferring their intentions. In contrast, robots usually coordinate explicitly through the extensive communication of utilities or intentions. In this paper we present a method that combines both approaches: implicit coordination with shared belief. In this approach, robots first communicate their beliefs about the world state to each other, using a CORBA-based communication module. They then use learned utility prediction models to predict the utility of each robot locally. Based on these utilities, an action is chosen. Within a heterogeneous soccer team, with robots from both the Munich and Ulm research groups, we apply implicit coordination with shared belief to a typical task from robotic soccer: regaining ball possession. An empirical evaluation demonstrates that the redundancy of implicit coordination with shared belief leads to robustness against communication failure and state estimation inaccuracy.     

Kinematics and the implementation of an elephant's trunk manipulator and other continuum style robots

Traditionally, robot manipulators have been a simple arrangement of a small number of serially connected links and actuated joints. Though these manipulators prove to be very effective for many tasks, they are not without their limitations, due mainly to their lack of maneuverability or total degrees of freedom. Continuum style (i.e., continuous "back-bone") robots, on the other hand, exhibit a wide range of maneuverability, and can have a large number of degrees of freedom. The motion of continuum style robots is generated through the bending of the robot over a given section; unlike traditional robots where the motion occurs in discrete locations, i.e., joints. The motion of continuum manipulators is often compared to that of biological manipulators such as trunks and tentacles. These continuum style robots can achieve motions that could only be obtainable by a conventionally designed robot with many more degrees of freedom. In this paper we present a detailed formulation and explanation of a novel kinematic model for continuum style robots. The design, construction, and implementation of our continuum style robot called the elephant trunk manipulator is presented. Experimental results are then provided to verify the legitimacy of our model when applied to our physical manipulator. We also provide a set of obstacle avoidance experiments that help to exhibit the practical implementation of both our manipulator and our kinematic model.     

Synchronization Control for a Swarm of Unicycle Robots: Analysis of Different Controller Topologies

This paper proposes a nonlinear synchronization controller for a swarm of unicycle robots performing a cooperative task, i.e., following a desired trajectory per robot while maintaining a prescribed formation. The effect of communication between robots is analyzed and several network topologies are investigated, e.g., all‐to‐all, ring type, undirected, among others. The stability analysis of the closed loop system is provided using the Lyapunov method. Experiments with four unicycle robots are presented to validate the control law and communication analysis. Accumulated errors over the experiment time are presented in order to determine which topology is most efficient.     

A novel approach of making better recommendations by revealing hidden desires and information curation for users of internet of things

One of the most significant disadvantages of the Internet of Things (IoT) is the overload of information. More information makes it harder to find valuable information. Recommendation systems identify the most suitable items for a given user. The recommended result is only valid if the system users know what they want, and clearly and explicitly convey their needs to the system. Because the role of a recommendation system is to calculate the similarity between the given request and each item, and to rank the similarity, the requests and identity of items should be clear to obtain correct results. However, in most situations in which recommendations are made, requests are implicit and ambiguous. A good recommendation system should make a reliable list of items, even with ambiguous requests. This paper proposes a model of generating recommendations for implicit requests. The model employs two methods that reveals the desire of the requestor and uses content curation with a customized layout to display the recommendations. The first method for revealing the requestor’s desire is to specify the implicit request by combining the user’s customized preference with the collective intelligence. The second method for employing content curation is to arrange the recommendation for users to accept spontaneously. To persuade users, the recommendations are transformed into a layout based on a personalized cognitive bias. Through these processes, reliable and beneficial recommendations can be provided to any user even if their requests are implicit or unclear.

     

Toward better retrieval and presentation by exploring cross-media correlations

This paper addresses explicit correlation and implicit correlation between various media streams in a composite multimedia document, the so-called navigated hypermedia document in our language learning system, in order to facilitate document retrieval and synchronized presentation. For replaying a recorded lecture in a form as close as possible to the original classroom experience, we devised a capturing mechanism to explicitly record all the lecturing media streams and relations between them, including instructors voice, slide change of the HTML lectures, and various guiding actions (e.g., tele-pointers, pen strokes, document scrolling, keyword highlighting, and text annotations) on HTML-based slides. In addition, for more effective learning, we study three different aspects - temporal, spatial, and content relation - of the implicit correlations that are inherently hidden between the media involved. The implicit relations are discovered by three designed processes: the speech-text alignment process for temporally synchronized speech-text presentation, the automatic scrolling process for the viewing windows spatial synchronization, and the content dependency checking process to ensure consistency of the content processed and the relations involved. The experimental results show that exploring cross-media correlations is helpful for system development in document presentation and retrieving. Users are allowed to replay a vivid and learning-effective multimedia lecture and to access the desired part of the document very easily via cross-media indexing. Hence the results have been applied to the development of online multimedia language learning systems aimed at improving students English and Chinese language capabilities.Published online: 14 December 2004     

Symbol emergence in robotics: a survey

Humans can learn a language through physical interaction with their environment and semiotic communication with other people. It is very important to obtain a computational understanding of how humans can form symbol systems and obtain semiotic skills through their autonomous mental development. Recently, many studies have been conducted regarding the construction of robotic systems and machine learning methods that can learn a language through embodied multimodal interaction with their environment and other systems. Understanding human?-social interactions and developing a robot that can smoothly communicate with human users in the long term require an understanding of the dynamics of symbol systems. The embodied cognition and social interaction of participants gradually alter a symbol system in a constructive manner. In this paper, we introduce a field of research called symbol emergence in robotics (SER). SER represents a constructive approach towards a symbol emergence system. The symbol emergence system is socially self-organized through both semiotic communications and physical interactions with autonomous cognitive developmental agents, i.e. humans and developmental robots. In this paper, specifically, we describe some state-of-art research topics concerning SER, such as multimodal categorization, word discovery, and double articulation analysis. They enable robots to discover words and their embodied meanings from raw sensory-motor information, including visual information, haptic information, auditory information, and acoustic speech signals, in a totally unsupervised manner. Finally, we suggest future directions for research in SER.     

Contextuality and computer-mediated communication: a cross cultural comparison

The purpose of this study is to assess the applicability of Hall’s cultural dimension of contextuality to computer-mediated communication (CMC) in internet forums. A content analysis of 376 postings from German (a low-context culture) and Indian (a high-context culture) internet forums was conducted. The results partially validate the explanatory power of contextuality. Congruent with Hall’s cultural perspective, it was found that Indians disclose less private information in online discussions than Germans. Furthermore, Indians used more emoticons than their German counterparts, reflecting the higher importance of nonverbal communication in high-context cultures.     

群机器人通信研究综述

为了完成规定任务,群机器人中的个体机器人之间须进行协调合作,这有赖于机器人在有限感知和局部交互基础上的群体智能行为涌现,故对群机器人系统中的通信研究现状进行述评。首先对通信机制进行了划分,指出隐式通信的效率较显式通信为低,且作为人工系统的群机器人中更多采用显式通信机制。针对显式通信,通过对通信方式、网络拓扑结构、通信协议及通信语言等主要内容进行阐述,明确群机器人中通信研究的现状,并对该领域的研究方向进行了展望。     

软件可信评估综述

软件可信评估是近年来计算机科学的一个新的研究热点和难点,对软件可信评估的研究有助于促进软件产业的振兴与发展。首先分析了软件可信评估的必要性;然后对可信评估的研究现状进行综述,主要包括体现可信的属性特征和软件可信等级的定义、软件可信评估模型、软件可信评估实现方案四个方面;同时分析了目前可信评估中存在的不足以及造成这些不足的根本原因;最后指出了可信评估的未来发展趋势。     

Internal and contextual factors, knowledge processes and performance: From the Chinese provider’s perspective

This paper explores the influences of two internal factors, i.e. supplier team’s IT-based skills and communication with client’s team, and two contextual factors, i.e. supplier team’s understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team, on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services from the Chinese provider’s perspective. Knowledge processes are characterized by knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management, and performance is measured by product success and personal satisfaction. Data have been collected in 13 companies in Xi’an Software Park, with 26 in-depth, semi-structured interviews held with top and middle managers, and 200 structured questionnaires distributed to knowledge workers who are involved in global sourcing projects. The results indicate that supplier team’s IT-based skills, communication with client’s team, cultural understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team are positively associated with knowledge process and performance. Also, knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management are found to be crucial for those influential factors to function positively and contribute to the performance. The findings of this study suggest that the effects of key factors on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services appear to transcend the social and cultural differences; however, contextual factors seem to have more significant influences on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services.