Now with PhD!

This Friday, the 23rd of April, I defended my thesis ‘People’s responses to autonomous and adaptive systems’ at the University of Amsterdam’s Agnietenkapel and was granted a PhD.

Paranimf Mattijs, me and my diploma. By Jochem Liem.

After a volcano almost prevented me from actually being in Amsterdam for my defense, actually hearing the beadle utter the words ‘hora est’ after the committee’s questions was great. Special thanks to my promotores Bob Wielinga & Vanessa Evers, my committee, including Noel Sharkey who stayed up until 5 AM to skype in, and of course paranimf Mattijs Ghijsen who watched my back.

Preparing & packing: CHI’10

Next week I’ll be in Atlanta for CHI. Come & say hi!

I’m presenting a note on Wednesday at 9.15:

Henriette Cramer, Vanessa Evers, Tim van Slooten, Mattijs Ghijsen, Bob Wielinga (2010) Trying Too Hard? Effects of Mobile Agents’ (Inappropriate) Social Expressiveness on Trust, Affect and Compliance

The note deals with the effects of potentially awkward social behaviour from mobile agents. Being social and empathic in user dialogues might help interaction with autonomous agents and mobile services, but there are serious consequences when you get it wrong… our note provides an example study. Come learn from our mistakes and ponder whether we always should strive for more social expressiveness.

I will also be participating in the Social Connectedness workshop:

Henriette Cramer, Nicolas Belloni, Mattias Rost (2010), On not being a stranger. Making sense of the sociable media landscape. (Workshop papers here).

And don’t forget the Nordic Party: The Finnish-Swedish CHI reception on Tuesday, 8pm, Max Lager’s (320 Peachtree Street, corner of Peachtree & West Peachtree, one block north of the Hyatt Regency). It’s the night before my early morning presentation, which, interestingly enough, will be in room Han(g)over. Come show us what you’re made of.

Being Hiroshi

After HRI’10 in Osaka I gave a talk at ATR’s Intelligent Robotics and Communication Labs, the place where Geminoid, Hiroshi Ishiguro’s doppelgänger robot lives. The visit was excellent and I really enjoyed my talk and the lab tour.

Meeting Geminoid after my talk was an interesting experience. I hadn’t expected it to affect me all that much, but the feeling I had during walking up to the robot was horribly similar to walking into an open casket wake; something felt off and it was a social situation I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with. Touching Geminoid felt strange, especially since you wouldn’t do the same to the real Hiroshi – in my mind he was around, watching.