In this article, we present the user-centered development of the service robot IURO. IURO’s goal is to find the way to a designated place in town without any previous map knowledge, just by retrieving information from asking pedestrians for directions. We present the 3-years development process,which involved a series of studies on its appearance, communication model, feedback modalities, and social navigation mechanisms. Our main contribution lies within the final field trial.With the autonomous IURO platform, we performed a series of six way-finding runs (over 24 hours of run-time in total) in the city center of Munich, Germany. The robot interacted with approximately 100 pedestrians of which 36 interactions included a full route dialogue. A variety of empirical methods was used to explore reactions of primary users (pedestrians who actually interacted with the robot) and secondary users (bystanders who observed others interacting). The gathered data provides insights into usability, user experience, and acceptance of IURO and allowed us deriving recommendations for the development of other socially interactive robots.
In HRI anthropomorphism has been considered to be a unidimensional construct. However, social psychological studies of the potentially reverse process to anthropomorphisation -known as dehumanization -indicate that there are two distinct senses of humanness with different consequences for people who are dehumanized by deprivation of some of the aspects of these dimensions. These attributes are crucial for perception of others as humans. Therefore, we hypothesized that the same attributes could be used to anthropomorphize a robot in HRI and only a two-dimensional measures would be suitable to distinguish between different forms of making a robot more humanlike. In a study where participants played a quiz based on the TV show "Jeopardy!" we manipulated a NAO robot's intelligence and emotionality. The results suggest that only emotionality, not intelligence, makes robots be perceived as more humanlike. Furthermore, we found some evidence that anthropomorphism is a multidimensional phenomenon.
Abstract. Research in ambient intelligent systems faces a challenging endeavor, namely the evaluation of user experience of ambient displays. Due to the fact that ambient displays should be unobtrusive, it is hard for users to appraise them on a reflective level (i.e. interviews and questionnaires). In this paper we present a methodological approach that combines an implicit (the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP)) and an explicit measurement technique (questionnaire for the persuasive effect (PeQ)) to tackle this problem. We used this approach in a study of an interface (Operator Guide) that provides information to operators in a semiconductor factory. Results show that the implicit technique is better suited to assess fine attitudinal differences on how users experience the display than explicit questionnaires. However, explicit measures are valuable to gain suggestions for improvements and thus it is concluded that this method triangulation adds value for the research on ambient persuasive interfaces.
We present insights from a study on communicating Synthetic Biology conducted in 2008. Scientists were invited to write press releases on their work; the resulting texts were passed on to four journalists from major Austrian newspapers and magazines. The journalists in turn wrote articles that were used as stimulus material for eight group discussions with select members of the Austrian public. The results show that, from the lab via the media to the general public, communication is characterized by two important tendencies: first, communication becomes increasingly focused on concrete applications of Synthetic Biology; and second, biotechnology represents an important benchmark against which Synthetic Biology is being evaluated. Keywords Public perceptions of Synthetic Biology Á Communication Á AnchoringCommunicating Synthetic Biology in the public sphere More than 10 years have passed since both the imports of genetically manipulated crops and Dolly the Sheep led to public and NGO protests in Europe. Since then, whenever a new technology appears, the question arises whether the new technology will be met with similar public reaction. Synthetic Biology (SB) receives considerable attention within expert circles, but the field is not yet prominent in the public domain. Media reporting has increased over the past few years (Cserer and Seiringer, in preparation) but the notion of ''synthetic biology'' has hardly entered public awareness. Very first studies on public perceptions of SB indicate that most lay people in the US say they have heard very little or nothing at all about SB [89% in the representative study by Hart Research Associates (2008), and 82% in the online-survey by Kahan et al. (2009)]. We are not aware of similar studies in other parts of the world.The fact that there has been little discussion about SB up to now does not mean, however, that it is uncontroversial. The first indication of an emerging public debate was an open letter to the Second International Conference on Synthetic Biology (SB 2.0) in May 2006, signed by 35 international NGOs, calling for inclusive public debate, regulation and oversight of the rapidly advancing field. The scientific community has tried to address the concerns by establishing self-imposed guidelines (Service 2006), with reference to the approach chosen for genetic engineering in the 1975 Asilomar declaration. In their analysis of the SYNBIOSAFE e-conference on the societal aspects of SB, Schmidt et al. (2008) highlight that within the SB community there is both a fear that public perceptions of SB might reignite past debates on genetic engineering and a hope that SB might be perceived as an emerging technology similar to nanotechnology, which is a technology that retained a comparatively more positive public image, at least in Europe [Gaskell et al. 2006; for an international comparison see Scheufele et al. (2008)].The fact that the terminology and meaning of SB are widely unknown and free from ''stigma'' in the public domain (Kunreuther and Slovic 2001) m...
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