Paul Baxter

University of Lincoln · School of Computer Science

The benefit of social robots to support child learning in an educational context over an extended period of time is evaluated. Specifically, the effect of personalisation and adaptation of robot social behaviour is assessed. Two autonomous robots were embedded within two matched classrooms of a primary school for a continuous two week period withou...

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research requires the integration and cooperation of multiple disciplines, technical and social, in order to make progress. In many cases using different motivations, each of these disciplines bring with them different assumptions and methodologies. We assess recent trends in the field of HRI by examining publications...

The technologies underlying long-term social Human-Robot Interaction (sHRI) continually advance, with impressive results. However, applications typically remain on relatively short time-scales, or if long-term, are more focussed on the human perspective than that of the robot. What are still missing are the broader theories of temporal organisation...

Memory may be broadly regarded as information gained from past experience that is available in the service of ongoing and future adaptive behavior. The biological implementation of memory shares little with memory in synthetic cognitive systems where it is typically regarded as a passive storage structure. Neurophysiological evidence indicates that...

For robots to interact effectively with human users they must be capable of coordinated, timely behavior in response to social context. The Adaptive Strategies for Sustainable Long-Term Social Interaction (ALIZ-E) project focuses on the design of long-term, adaptive social interaction between robots and child users in real-world settings. In this p...

Robots in Education is an accessible introduction to the use of robotics in formal learning, encompassing pedagogical and psychological theories as well as implementation in curricula. Today, a variety of communities across education are increasingly using robots as general classroom tutors, tools in STEM projects, and subjects of study. This volum...

Efficient and robust motion perception systems are important pre-requisites for achieving visually guided flights in future micro air vehicles. As a source of inspiration, the visual neural networks of flying insects such as honeybee and Drosophila provide ideal examples on which to base artificial motion perception models. In this paper, we have u...

Continuously measuring the engagement of users with a robot in a Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) setting paves the way toward in-situ reinforcement learning, improve metrics of interaction quality, and can guide interaction design and behavior optimization. However, engagement is often considered very multi-faceted and difficult to capture in a worka...

The last few decades have seen widespread advances in technological means to characterise observable aspects of human behaviour such as gaze or posture. Among others, these developments have also led to significant advances in social robotics. At the same time, however, social robots are still largely evaluated in idealised or laboratory conditions...

Continuously measuring the engagement of users with a robot in a Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) setting paves the way towards in-situ reinforcement learning, improve metrics of interaction quality, and can guide interaction design and behaviour optimisation. However, engagement is often considered very multi-faceted and difficult to capture in a wor...

The use of robots in educational and STEM engagement activities is widespread. In this paper we describe a system developed for engaging learners with the design of dialogue-based interactivity for mobile robots. With an emphasis on a web-based solution that is grounded in both a real robot system and a real application domain – a museum guide robo...

Striking the right balance between robot autonomy and human control is a core challenge in social robotics, in both technical and ethical terms. On the one hand, extended robot autonomy offers the potential for increased human productivity and for the off-loading of physical and cognitive tasks. On the other hand, making the most of human technical...

The development of autonomous robots for agriculture depends on a successful approach to recognize user needs as well as datasets reflecting the characteristics of the domain. Available datasets for 3D Action Recognition generally feature controlled lighting and framing while recording subjects from the front. They mostly reflect good recording con...

Robot-assisted therapy (RAT) offers potential advantages for improving the social skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This article provides an overview of the developed technology and clinical results of the EC-FP7-funded Development of Robot-Enhanced therapy for children with AutisM spectrum disorders (DREAM) project, which a...

We present a new angular velocity estimation model for explaining the honeybee’s flight behaviours of tunnel centring and terrain following, capable of reproducing observations of the large independence to the spatial frequency and contrast of the gratings in visually guide flights of honeybees. The model combines both temporal and texture informat...

Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used in HRI research by including social robots in health-care interventions by virtue of their ability to engage human users both social and emotional dimensions. Research projects on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of these projects have the overall ambitious...

We propose a new bio-plausible model based on the visual systems of Drosophila for estimating angular velocity of image motion in insects’ eyes. The model implements both preferred direction motion enhancement and non-preferred direction motion suppression which is discovered in Drosophila’s visual neural circuits recently to give a stronger direct...

Robotics is a multidisciplinary and highly innovative field. Recently, multiple and often minimally connected sub-communities of child-robot interaction have started to emerge, variously focusing on the design issues, engineering, and applications of robotic platforms and toolkits. Despite increasing public interest in robots, including robots for...

Robots in agricultural contexts are finding increased numbers of applications with respect to (partial) automation for increased productivity. However, this presents complex technical problems to be overcome, which are magnified when these robots are intended to work side-by-side with human workers. In this contribution we present an exploratory pi...

Table-top object manipulation is a well-established test bed on which to study both basic foundations of general human-robot interaction and more specific collaborative tasks. A prerequisite, both for studies and for actual collaborative or assistive tasks, is the robust perception of any objects involved. This paper presents a real-time capable an...

Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research by including social robots in health-care interventions by virtue of their ability to engage human users in both social and emotional dimensions. Research projects on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of these projec...

Human-Robot Collaboration is an area of particular current interest, with the attempt to make robots more generally useful in contexts where they work side-by-side with humans. Currently, efforts typically focus on the sensory and motor aspects of the task on the part of the robot to enable them to function safely and effectively given an assigned...

Robot behaviour details and questionnaires. Full details of the robot behaviour in the two experimental conditions, and transcript of the questionnaires used in the post-study debriefing. (PDF)

Experimental data spreadsheet. All details of the experimental data, organised by spreadsheet tab, including pre/post and within-interaction learning and performance data, and screen question and questionnaire responses. (ZIP)

Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through remote control of the robot in so-called Wizard of Oz (WoZ) paradigms. However, there is a need to increase the autonomy of the robot both to lighten the burden on human therapists (who have to remain in control...

Several studies have indicated that interacting with social robots in educational contexts may lead to a greater learning than interactions with computers or virtual agents. As such, an increasing amount of social human–robot interaction research is being conducted in the learning domain, particularly with children. However, it is unclear precisely...

A key challenge of HRI is allowing robots to be adaptable, especially as robots are expected to penetrate society at large and to interact in unexpected environments with non-technical users. One way of providing this adaptability is to use Interactive Machine Learning, i.e. having a human supervisor included in the learning process who can steer t...

When a robot is learning it needs to explore its environment and how its environment responds on its actions. When the environment is large and there are a large number of possible actions the robot can take, this exploration phase can take prohibitively long. However, exploration can often be optimised by letting a human expert guide the robot dur...

An increasing amount of research has started to explore the impact of robot social behaviour on the outcome of a goal for a human interaction partner, such as cognitive learning gains. However, it remains unclear from what principles the social behaviour for such robots should be derived. Human models are often used, but in this paper an alternativ...

Child-robot interactions are increasingly being explored in domains which require longer-term application, such as healthcare and education. In order for a robot to behave in an appropriate manner over longer timescales, its behaviours should be coterminous with that of the interacting children. Generating such sustained and engaging social behavio...

The field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is increasingly exploring the use of social robots for educating children. Commonly, non-academic audiences will ask how robots compare to humans in terms of learning outcomes. This question is also interesting for social roboticists as humans are often assumed to be an upper benchmark for social behaviour...

An increasing amount of research is being conducted to determine how a robot tutor should behave socially in educational interactions with children. Both human-human and human-robot interaction literature predicts an increase in learning with increased social availability of a tutor, where social availability has verbal and nonverbal components. Pr...

This volume is the proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction, held at the AISB Convention 2016, which took place on the 5th and 6th of April 2016, in Sheffield, U.K. Organised by Organised by Maha Salem (Google U.K.), Astrid Weiss (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Paul Baxter (Lincoln Unive...

The Memory-Centred Cognition perspective places an active association substrate at the heart of cognition, rather than as a passive adjunct. Consequently, it places prediction and priming on the basis of prior experience to be inherent and fundamental aspects of processing. Social interaction is taken here to minimally require contingent and co-ada...

This volume is the proceedings of the 2nd workshop on Cognitive Architectures for Social Human-Robot Interaction, held at the ACM/IEEE HRI 2016 conference, which took place on Monday 7th March 2016, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Organised by Paul Baxter (Plymouth University, U.K.), J. Gregory Trafton (Naval Research Laboratory, USA), and Severin Le...

Nonverbal immediacy has been positively correlated with cognitive learning gains in human-human interaction, but remains relatively under-explored in human-robot interaction contexts. This paper presents a study in which robot behaviour is derived from the principles of nonverbal immediacy. Both high and low immediacy behaviours are evaluated in a...

Robots are being increasingly used in schools by researchers keen to assess how they may be used to facilitate learning and provide support. Based on 15 school experiment visits at 9 different schools in the U.K., we outline our observations, specifically focusing on the broader implications of robots in the classroom primarily from the perspective...

This paper introduces a research effort to develop and evaluate social robots for second language tutoring in early childhood. The L2TOR project will capitalise on recent observations in which social robots have been shown to have marked benefits over screen-based technologies in education, both in terms of learning outcomes and motivation. As lang...

The Wizard-of-Oz robot control methodology is widely used and typically places a high burden of effort and attention on the human supervisor to ensure appropriate robot behaviour, which may distract from other aspects of the task engaged in. We propose that this load can be reduced by enabling the robot to learn online from the guidance of the supe...

Social robots have the potential to provide support in a number of practical domains, such as learning and behaviour change. This potential is particularly relevant for children, who have proven receptive to interactions with social robots. To reach learning and therapeutic goals, a number of issues need to be investigated, notably the design of an...

In a large number of human-robot interaction (HRI) studies , the aim is often to improve the social behaviour of a robot in order to provide a better interaction experience. Increasingly, companion robots are not being used merely as interaction partners, but to also help achieve a goal. One such goal is education, which encompasses many other fact...

Gaze analysis of human-robot interactions can reveal much about the dynamics of the interaction and be a useful step in establishing levels of engagement and attention. Currently, much of this work has to be conducted manually through post-hoc video coding due to current limitations in non-invasive, real-time gaze tracking solutions. This paper ass...

Social robots are finding increasing application in the domain of education, particularly for children, to support and augment learning opportunities. With an implicit assumption that social and adaptive behaviour is desirable, it is therefore of interest to determine precisely how these aspects of behaviour may be exploited in robots to support ch...

Robot Assisted Therapy (RAT) for children with ASD has found promising applications. In this paper, we outline an autonomous action selection mechanism to extend current RAT approaches. This will include the ability to revert control of the therapeutic intervention to the supervising therapist. We suggest that in order to maintain the goals of ther...

The application of social robots to the domain of education is becoming more prevalent. However, there remain a wide range of open issues, such as the effectiveness of robots as tutors on student learning outcomes, the role of social behaviour in teaching interactions, and how the embodiment of a robot influences the interaction. In this paper, we...

Being a child with diabetes is challenging: apart from the emotional difficulties of dealing with the disease, there are multiple physical aspects that need to be dealt with on a daily basis. Furthermore, as the children grow older, it becomes necessary to self-manage their condition without the explicit supervision of parents or carers. This proce...

A field study was conducted in which CRI activities developed by the ALIZ-E project were tested with the project's primary user group: children with diabetes. This field study resulted in new insights in the modalities and roles a robot aimed at CRI in a healthcare setting might utilise, while in addition (re-)assessed some practises and technologi...

In human relationships, responsiveness---behaving in a sensitive manner that is supportive of another person's needs---plays a major role in any interaction that involves effective communication, caregiving, and social support. Perceiving one's partner ...

In this contribution, we describe a method of analysing and interpreting the direction and timing of a human's gaze over time towards a robot whilst interacting. Based on annotated video recordings of the interactions, this post-hoc analysis can be used to determine how this gaze behaviour changes over the course of an interaction, following from t...

Developments in autonomous agents for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), particularly social, are gathering pace. The typical approach to such efforts is to start with an application to a specific interaction context (problem, task, or aspect of interaction) and then try to generalise to different contexts. Alternatively however, the application of Cog...

Compliance studies in human-robot interaction (HRI) tend to consist of direct requests from the robot to the human. It is suggested that indirect requests are considered more polite, which has been positively correlated with learning gains. An experiment is conducted to explore compliance with indirect robot requests in teaching interactions. A com...

The use of robots in child education has emerged as a promising social human-robot interaction domain. Our experiment considering the effect of robotic embodiment on child learning reveals significant overall learning effects, but no significant differences between conditions. However, the real robot attracts significantly more gaze from the child...

Artificial companion agents have the potential to combine novel means for effective health communication with young patients sup-port and entertainment. However, the theory and practice of long-term child-robot interaction is currently an under-developed area of research. This paper introduces an approach that integrates multi-ple functional aspect...

The use of concepts is fundamental to human-level cognition, but there remain a number of open questions as to the structures supporting this competence. Specifically, it has been shown that humans use concept prototypes, a flexible means of representing concepts such that it can be used both for categorisation and for similarity judgements. In the...

Child-Robot Interaction (cHRI) is a promising point of entry into the rich challenge that social HRI is. Starting from three years of experiences gained in a cHRI research project, this paper offers a view on the opportunities offered by letting robots interact with children rather than with adults and having the interaction in real-world circumsta...

With increasingly competent robotic systems desired and required for social human–robot interaction comes the necessity for more complex means of control. Cognitive architectures (specifically the perspective where principles of structure and function are sought to account for multiple cognitive competencies) have only relatively recently been cons...

A case study is presented in which a socially capable robot played multiple activities during multiple sessions with hospitalised children. In this paper we show how an environment was created in which children engage with the robot and feel at liberty to express their preferences regarding which activities to play. Valuable lessons regarding robot...

When studying social interactions, robust data collection protocols can come at the expense of allowing a natural interaction to take place because of a rigid structure in the experimental scenario. This work seeks to explore the use of an interaction mediator as a tool to constrain the content of a social interaction without imposing an interactio...

The 'Sandtray' has been designed as a platform to examine social interactions in which the interaction is not constrained a priori. A pilot study has been conducted with children to assess the suitability of the Sandtray for social HRI studies, using a wizard-of-oz robot control scheme. One aspect of importance is whether the children (previously u...

The use of concepts is regarded as fundamental to human-level cognition, but there remain a number of open questions as to the functions of, and structures supporting, this competence. In the context of autonomous cognitive systems, the processes by which such concept functionality could be acquired would be particularly useful - indeed, a developm...