Abstract—Cooperative gestures are a key aspect of humanhuman pro-social interaction. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that endowing humanoid robots with the ability to use such gestures when interacting with humans would be useful. However, while people are used to responding to such gestures expressed by other humans, it is unclear how they might react to a robot making them. To explore this topic, we conducted a withinsubjects, video-based laboratory experiment, measuring time to cooperate with a humanoid robot making interactional gestures. We manipulated the gesture type (beckon, give, shake hands), the gesture style (smooth, abrupt), and the gesture orientation (front, side). We also employed two measures of individual differences: negative attitudes toward robots (NARS) and human gesture decoding ability (DANVA2-POS). Our results show that people cooperate with abrupt gestures more quickly than smooth ones and front-oriented gestures more quickly than those made to the side, people’s speed at decoding robot gestures is correlated with their ability to decode human gestures, and negative attitudes toward robots is strongly correlated with a decreased ability in decoding human gestures. Index Terms—affective robotics; cooperation; gestures; human-robot interaction I.

Abstract. We present a new paradigm for the design of interactive robots called affective-centered design. By drawing on the disciplines of human-computer interaction (HCI), affective computing, and human-robot interaction (HRI), we suggest techniques robot designers can use to help ensure interactions with their robots are of high affective quality, and thus more likely to be enjoyed and accepted by users.

Abstract — In this paper, we propose a method to achieve temporal scaling of leg motions as a fundamental technique for a music feedback system of a dancing humanoid robot. We asked dancers to perform dance motion at normal musical tempo and faster musical tempos and observed how dancers modified performance for given musical tempos. The obtained insights from the observation are 1) a dancer needs to preserve leg postures that are important to emphasize dance expression, 2) there is a priority to determine what features of leg motion can be adjusted, and 3) stylistic leg motion resembles normal step motion if dancers cannot follow fast musical tempo completely. Based on these insights, we generate leg motion appropriately adjusted for changing musical tempo while maintaining balance. We validated our method via simulation experiments with a humanoid robot HRP-2. I.

Abstract—We explore a new way of using robots as humanhuman social facilitators: inter-ability communication. This refers to communication between people with disabilities and those without disabilities. We have interviewed people with head and facial movement disorders (n = 4), and, using a visionbased approach, recreated their movements on our 27 degreeof-freedom android robot. We then conducted an exploratory experiment (n = 26) to see if the robot might serve as a suitable tool to allow people to practice inter-ability interaction on a robot before doing it with a person. Our results suggest a robot may be useful in this manner. Furthermore, we have found a significant relationship between people who hold negative attitudes toward robots and negative attitudes toward people with disabilities. I.

Abstract. Human behavior is complex, but structured along individual and social lines. Robotic systems interacting with people in uncontrolled environments need capabilities to correctly interpret, predict and respond to human behaviors. This paper discusses the scientific, technological and application challenges that arise from the mutual interaction of robotics and computational human behavior understanding. We supply a short survey of the area to provide a contextual framework and describe the most recent research in this area. 1