Monday evening: human-robot interaction ‘kenniscafé’ in De Balie

This Monday, the 15th, I’ll be participating in a discussion on human-robot interaction in culture & debate centre ‘De Balie’ here in Amsterdam. The evening is part of the ‘Kenniscafé’ series of discussions on current themes in science and technology. Themes will include social consequences of developments in robotics, requirements for interaction design and bonding with machines. Stefano Stramigioli (Twente) and Martijntje Smits (Rathenau Institute) will also participate in the discussion. Noel Sharkey and roboseal Paro‘s developer Takanori Shibata will contribute to the event as well. Quite a nice way to spend a Monday evening, rsvp here.

New paper: robots & touch

New paper! June 18th we’ll present our work on touch and human-robot interaction at CASA 2009 here in Amsterdam. The full paper will appear in a special issue of the Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds. Our paper discusses an experiment on the effects of (observing) touch and proactivity on attitudes towards embodied social agents. Based on our results we think a holistic approach to interaction design for embodied characters’ social behaviour is the way to go.