Teaching NICO How to Grasp: An Empirical Study on Crossmodal Social Interaction as a Key Factor for Robots Learning From Humans

Abstract

To overcome novel challenges in complex domestic environments, humanoid robots can learn from human teachers. We propose that the capability for social interaction should be a key factor in this teaching process and benefits both the subjective experience of the human user and the learning process itself. To support our hypothesis, we present a Human-Robot Interaction study on human-assisted visuomotor learning with the robot NICO, the Neuro-Inspired COmpanion, a child-sized humanoid. NICO is a flexible, social platform with sensing and manipulation abilities. We give a detailed description of NICO's design and a comprehensive overview of studies that use or evaluate NICO. To engage in social interaction, NICO can express stylized facial expressions and utter speech via an Embodied Dialogue System. NICO is characterized in particular by combining these social interaction capabilities with the abilities for human-like object manipulation and crossmodal perception. In the presented study, NICO acquires visuomotor grasping skills by interacting with its environment. In contrast to methods like motor babbling, the learning process is, in part, supported by a human teacher. To begin the learning process, an object is placed into NICO's hand, and if this object is accidentally dropped, the human assistant has to recover it. The study is conducted with 24 participants with little or no prior experience with robots. In the robot-guided experimental condition, assistance is actively requested by NICO via the Embodied Dialogue System. In the human-guided condition, instructions are given by a human experimenter, while NICO remains silent. Evaluation using established questionnaires like Godspeed, Mind Perception, and Uncanny Valley Indices, along with a structured interview and video analysis of the interaction, show that the robot's active requests for assistance foster the participant's engagement and benefit the learning process. This result supports the hypothesis that the ability for social interaction is a key factor for companion robots that learn with the help of non-expert teachers, as these robots become capable of communicating active requests or questions that are vital to their learning process. We also show how the design of NICO both enables and is driven by this approach.

An Immersive Investment Game to Study Human-Robot Trust

“…We utilize NICO (Neuro-Inspired COmpanion) (Kerzel et al, 2020(Kerzel et al, , 2017, an open-source social robotics platform for humanoid robots (see Figure 4) designed by the Knowledge Technology group at the Universität Hamburg. NICO is a child-sized humanoid robot that has a range of programmable human-like sensory and motor capabilities, accessible and customisable through the Robot Operating System (ROS) (Quigley et al, 2009), characterized in particular by combining social interaction capabilities.…”

“…In this scenario, we utilize two Neuro-Inspired COmpanion (NICO) humanoid robots by Kerzel et al (2020) to advise the participant who acts as a spaceship commander. A voicecontrolled artificial intelligence system which we refer to by "Wendigo" guides the participant through the experiment, where a large curved projector screen with an interactive video feed simulates the inside of the ship's cockpit (see Figure 1).…”

Crossmodal Language Grounding in an Embodied Neurocognitive Model

“…Our developmental robot is the Neuro-Inspired COmpanion NICO (Kerzel et al, 2017 , 2020 ), created by the Knowledge Technology group of the University of Hamburg. NICO is a research platform that is developed toward research on crossmodal perception, visuomotor learning, and multi-modal human-robot interaction through the embodiment of neurocognitive models.…”

Exploring Human-Robot Trust Through the Investment Game

“…We chose their names to be as neutral and unrelated to any prior experience of participants as possible. We utilise NICO (Neuro-Inspired COmpanion) [26,27], an open-source social robotics platform for humanoid robots (see Figure 2) designed by the Knowledge Technology group at the University of Hamburg. NICO is a child-sized humanoid robot that has a range of programmable capabilities, accessible and customise-able through the Robot Operating System (ROS) [40].…”

“…The result is an HRI scenario, concealed as a futuristic, immersive space ship adventure containing multiple rounds of the investment game for participants to develop intrinsic motivation to collaborate with the robots. In this scenario, we utilise two fully autonomous Neuro-Inspired Companion (NICO) [26] humanoid robots that advise the participant (who acts as the ship's commander), a voice-controlled ship AI that guides the experiment, and a large curved projector screen that simulates the inside of the ship's cockpit with an interactive video feed (see Figure 1). During the experiment, participants encounter four different challenges (e.g., engine failures, impending asteroids) where they can question the two robots, that always provide two diverging solutions.…”