CS 791x: Robotics for Humanity

Course Info

Date/Time: TTh 4-5:15pm
Location: SEM 201
Instructor: Dr. David Feil-Seifer (dave@cse.unr.edu)
Office Hours: TWTh 2:30-3:30pm

Objectives: Students who take this class will:

Gain a knowledge of basic robotics fundamentals such as: sensing, navigation, planning, and tele-operation. Understand how basic robotics concepts are applied to understanding Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Learn and apply research methods commonly used in the HRI field. Read and evaluate scientific literature to determine follow-up areas for research exploration and constructively criticize experiment design. Understand basic robotics programming concepts using a robotics control framework widely used in the field. Complete a group research project extending a current robotics capability or studying a new facet of Human-Robot Interaction.

Course Guidelines:

Grading:

The final grade will be made up of:

• 20%: Paper presentations and classroom discussion
• 20%: Paper critiques
• 60%: Research projects

Prerequisites:

There are no set pre-requisites for this course. However, programming skills will be required for the class projects, so it is not recommended to take this class if you have no programming experience.

Etiquette:

The best etiquette, especially for projects, is to plan ahead. Make sure that you have all the resources you need before you start working. Get your code done as quickly as possible and set realistic goals for your project. When you encounter difficulties ask your other group members or other groups before asking the instructor. Remember, there are far fewer instructors than there are groups. However, do not hesitate to ask when you get stuck.
Etiquette for in-class discussions are clear. Try not to interrupt. Do not state the same point over and over again. Speaking more does not necessarily mean a good discussion grade. Speaking well does. Do not interfere with other people adding to the discussion or monopolize the discussion.

Assignments:

Paper Critiques:

At the beginning of each lecture, students will submit a critique of each of the papers discussed during that lecture. This critique must be constructive in nature. If an aspect of an experiment design or analysis is questioned, the critique must include a potential remedy. If there is no questionable aspect of a particular paper, then the critique must provide a unique follow-up question inspired by the results of the paper. Critiques should be 1-2 pages in length for each paper.

Paper Presentations:

Each paper will be presented by the students in class. Students will be assigned papers based on preference and availability.

Discussion:

Each week will feature a classroom discussion regarding the papers. Students are encouraged to discuss issues arising in their critiques of the relevant papers. Participation in this discussion will be graded. Quantity is far less important than quality. As with the critiques, constructive comments will be prized over simply saying “This method is not good.”

Research Project:

Students will submit group research projects. Groups up to 4 people will be allowed. The final milestone of this project is a short (6-8 page) paper summarizing the motivation, approach, and results of the project. Project timeline is as follows:

• Week 5 Group ideas due: For this milestone, students should turn in the members of their group and 1-paragraph descriptions of three distinct projects to be discussed with the TA/Instructor.
• Week 6 Project proposal draft due: Groups must turn in a short project description of the motivating problem and how the project will address this problem. Think of this milestone as the “Introduction” and “Background and Motivation” sections of a research paper.
• Week 8 Detailed project proposal due: Groups will turn in an extended project description detailing the approach, experiment design, and analysis plan for any data collected. Think of this milestone as the Introduction, Background, Approach, Experiment Design, and the outline of the Analysis sections. Clearly state the hypotheses of the experiment. Groups will present a 15-20 minute presentation about their project idea in order to groups to receive constructive criticism from the rest of the class.
• Final papers will be due on May 4th. Groups will turn in a completed research paper at the beginning of class. I can review, edit and return papers turned in more than a week early, if you are concerned about your work.

Academic Honesty Policy

Class Conduct:

A student may be dropped from class at any time for negligence or misconduct, upon recommendation of the instructor and with approval of the college dean. Students may also be dropped for non-attendance upon indication of the instructor.
Academic dishonesty is against university as well as the system community standards. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Plagiarism: defined as submitting the language, ideas, thoughts or work of another as one's own; or assisting in the act of plagiarism by allowing one's work to be used in this fashion.
• Cheating: defined as (1) obtaining or providing unauthorized information during an examination through verbal, visual or unauthorized use of books, notes, text and other materials; (2) obtaining or providing information concerning all or part of an examination prior to that examination; (3) taking an examination for another student, or arranging for another person to take an exam in one's place; (4) altering or changing test answers after submittal for grading, grades after grades have been awarded, or other academic records once these are official.

Schedule:

Unit I - The Science of HRI, Fundamentals:

Week 1

• 1/19 - Intro
• 1/21 - From human-human to human-machine interaction Cliff Nass. The Media Equation. (Feil-Seifer)

Week 2

• 1/26 - Experimental Robotics
  1. Mutlu, B. and Forlizzi, J. “Robots in organizations: the role of workflow, social, and environmental factors in human-robot interaction.” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI).2008. (pdf) (Tanvir)
  2. Kanda, Takayuki, et al. "An affective guide robot in a shopping mall." Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction. ACM, 2009. (pdf) (Santosh)
  3. Salter, Tamie, et al. "Using proprioceptive sensors for categorizing human-robot interactions." Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2007 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2007. (pdf) (Vlad)
• 1/28 - More Experimental Robotics
  1. Bilge Mutlu, Jessica K Hodgins, and Jodi Forlizzi, "A Storytelling Robot: Modeling and Evaluation of Human-like Gaze Behavior," Proceedings of HUMANOIDS'06, 2006 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, December, 2006. (pdf) (Sam)
  2. Lee, M.K. and Forlizzi, J. and Rybski, P.E. and Crabbe, F. and Chung, W. and Finkle, J. and Glaser, E. and Kiesler, S. “The snackbot: documenting the design of a robot for long-term human-robot interaction.” In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction. 2009. (pdf)

Week 3

• 2/2 - Evaluating HRI
  1. Aaron Steinfeld, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, and Brian Scassellati, "The Oz of Wizard: Simulating the Human for Interaction Research," ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), March, 2009.(pdf) (Tianyi)
  2. J. Forlizzi and C. DiSalvo. Service robots in the domestic environment: {A study of the Roomba} vacuum in the home.Proceeding of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART conference on Human-robot interaction.2006. (pdf) (Meera)
• 2/4 - Evaluating HRI II
  1. P. H. Kahn and H. Ishiguro and B. Friedman and T. Kanda. What is a Human? -- Toward Psychological Benchmarks in the Field of Human-Robot Interaction. IEEE Proceedings of the International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). 2006. (pdf) (Harrison)
  2. Takayama, Leila, Victoria Groom, and Clifford Nass. "I'm sorry, Dave: i'm afraid i won't do that: social aspects of human-agent conflict." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2009. (pdf) (Jiwar)

Week 4

• 2/11 - Implementing a robot System
  • ROS I

• 2/13 - Navigation
  1. S. Thrun and M. Bennewitz and W. Burgard and A. Cremers and F. Dellaert and D. Fox and D. Hahnel and C. Rosenberg and N. Roy and J. Schulte and D. Schulz.{MINERVA}: A Second-Generation Museum Tour-Guide Robot.Proceedings: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '99).1999. (pdf) (Majed)
  2. David J. Feil-Seifer and Maja J. Matarić, "People-Aware Navigation For Goal-Oriented Behavior Involving a Human Partner," In Proceedings of the International Conference on Development and Learning, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Aug 2011. (pdf) (Sonu)
  3. Trautman, Peter, and Andreas Krause. "Unfreezing the robot: Navigation in dense, interacting crowds." Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. IEEE, 2010. (pdf) (Jamie)

Week 5

• 2/16 - Mistreatment and Distress
  • Kahn Jr, Peter H., et al. "“Robovie, you'll have to go into the closet now”: Children's social and moral relationships with a humanoid robot." Developmental psychology 48.2 (2012): 303. (pdf)
  • Briggs, Gordon, and Matthias Scheutz. "How robots can affect human behavior: Investigating the effects of robotic displays of protest and distress." International Journal of Social Robotics 6.3 (2014): 343-355. (pdf) (Touqeer)
  • KILL ONE PAPER
• 2/18 - Model-Based Actions
  • Crick, C. and Doniec, M. and Scassellati, B..Who is IT? Inferring role and intent from agent motion. Proceedings of the International Conference on Development and Learning.2007. (pdf) (Vahid)
  • Dragan, Anca D., et al. "Effects of Robot Motion on Human-Robot Collaboration." Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. ACM, 2015. (pdf) (Deepak)
  • Project Critiques Due

Week 6

• 2/23 - Robot Handoffs
  • Henny Admoni, Anca Dragan, Siddhartha Srinivasa, Brian Scassellati. (2014). Deliberate Delays During Robot-to-Human Handovers Improve Compliance With Gaze Communication. In: Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2014). Bielefeld, Germany, March 3-6. (pdf) (Deepak)
  • Moon, A., Troniak, D.M., Gleeson, B., Pan, M.K.X.J., Zheng, M., Blumer, B.A., MacLean, K., and Croft, E.A., Meet Me where I’m Gazing: How Shared Attention Gaze Affects Human-Robot Handover Timing, HRI 2014. (pdf) (Moon)
• 2/25 - Politeness and Avoiding Conflict
  • Kato, Yusuke, Takayuki Kanda, and Hiroshi Ishiguro. "May I help you?: Design of Human-like Polite Approaching Behavior." Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. ACM, 2015. (pdf) (Touqeer)
  • Martelaro, Nikolas, Malte Jung, and Pamela Hinds. "Using Robots to Moderate Team Conflict: The Case of Repairing Violations." Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction Extended Abstracts. ACM, 2015.(pdf) (Sonu)

Week 7

• 3/1 - Modeling Interaction
  • Meisner, Eric, et al. "ShadowPlay: a generative model for nonverbal human-robot interaction." Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2009 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2009. (pdf) (Harrison)
  • Trafton, J. Gregory, et al. "Enabling effective human-robot interaction using perspective-taking in robots." Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans, IEEE Transactions on 35.4 (2005): 460-470. (pdf) (Vlad)
• 3/3 - TBD

Week 8 (out of town)

• 3/8 - Teleoperation
  • Baker, M.; Casey, R.; Keyes, B.; Yanco, H.A.; , "Improved interfaces for human-robot interaction in urban search and rescue," Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2004 IEEE International Conference on , vol.3, no., pp. 2960- 2965 vol.3, 10-13 Oct. 2004 (pdf)
  • Katherine Tsui, Holly Yanco, David Kontak, Linda Beliveau, Development and evaluation of a flexible interface for a wheelchair mounted robotic arm. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction. 2008 (pdf)
• 3/10 - Rescue Robotics
  • Casper, Jennifer, and Robin R. Murphy. "Human-robot interactions during the robot-assisted urban search and rescue response at the world trade center." Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on 33.3 (2003): 367-385. (pdf)
  • Balakirsky, Stephen, et al. "Towards heterogeneous robot teams for disaster mitigation: Results and Performance Metrics from RoboCup Rescue." Journal of Field Robotics 24.11‐12 (2007): 943-967. (pdf) (Tanvir)

Week 9 - Project Presentations

Week 10 - Spring Break

Week 11 - Project Presentations

Week 12

• 4/5 - Ethics I
  • Bartneck, C., Verbunt, M., Mubin, O., & Mahmud, A. A. (2007). To kill a mockingbird robot. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Washington DC pp. 81-87. (pdf) (Vahid)
  • David J. Feil-Seifer and Maja J. Matarić, "Ethical Principles for Socially Assistive Robotics ," In IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, 18(1), pp. 24-31, Mar 2011. (pdf) (Tanvir)
  • Tiffany L. Chen, Matei Ciocarlie, Steve Cousins, Phillip M. Grice, Kelsey Hawkins, Kaijen Hsiao, Charles C. Kemp, Chih-Hung King, Daniel A. Lazewatsky, Adam E. Leeper, Hai Nguyen, Andreas Paepcke, Caroline Pantofaru, William D. Smart, and Leila Takayama. Robots for Humanity: Using Assistive Robotics to Empower People with Disabilities. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 1070.9932/13 (2013). (pdf)
• 4/7 - Ethics II
  • Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey.The crying shame of robot nannies: an ethical appraisal. Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems. 2010. (pdf)
  • David J. Feil-Seifer and Maja J. Mataric’. Dry Your Eyes: Examining the Roles of Robots for Childcare Applications. IEEE Intelligent Systems. 2010. (pdf)
  • Laurel D. Riek and Don Howard. A Code of Ethics for the Human-Robot Interaction Profession. 2014 (pdf)

Week 13

• 4/12 - Best of HRI I I
  • Kory Kraft and Bill Smart. "Seeing is Comforting: Effects of Teleoperator Visibility in Robot-Mediated Health Care," Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interation, pp 11-18. 2016. (pdf)
  • Lessons Learned from the Deployment of a Long-term Autonomous Robot as Companion in Physical Therapy for Older Adults with Dementia: A Mixed Methods Study, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interation, pp 27-34. 2016. (pdf)
• 4/14 - Best of HRI II
  • Henny Admoni, Thomas Weng, Bradley Hayes, Brian Scassellati. "Robot Nonverbal Behavior Improves Task Performance In Difficult Collaborations," Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interation, pp 51-58. 2016. (pdf)
  • Jimmy Baraglia, Maya Cakmak, Yukie Nagai, Rajesh Rao, Minoru Asada. Initiative in Robot Assistance during Collaborative Task Execution, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interation, pp 67-74. 2016. (pdf)

Week 14

• 4/19 - Ethics III
• Arkin, Ronald C. "Governing lethal behavior: Embedding ethics in a hybrid deliberative/reactive robot architecture part I: Motivation and philosophy." Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2008 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2008. (pdf)
• “Relational Artifacts with Children and Elders: The Complexities of Cybercompanionship” (with Will Taggart, Cory D. Kidd, and Olivia Dasté). Connection Science, Vol.18 No. 4, December 2006. (pdf)
• 4/21 - Ethics IV
• SH Seo, D Geiskkovitch, M Nakane, C King, and JE Young. "Poor Thing! Would You Feel Sorry for a Simulated Robot?: A comparison of empathy toward a physical and a simulated robot." In Proceedings of ACM/IEEE Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2015. (pdf)

Week 15

• 4/25 - SAR and Autism
• Robins, B. and Dautenhahn, K. and te Boekhorst, R. and Nehaniv, C.L. “Behaviour delay and robot expressiveness in child-robot interactions: a user study on interaction kinesics.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). 2008. (pdf) (Majed)
• H. Kozima and Y. Yasuda and C. Nakagawa. “Social interaction facilitated by a minimally-designed robot: Finding from longitudinal therapeutic practices for autistic children.” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). 2007. (pdf) (Meera)

Week 16

• 5/4 - Final papers due: Video Day