ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction

The position paper presents an argument that aesthetic theory and practice are pertinent to the rapidly expanding field of soft robotics. Soft robotics as an aesthetic phenomenon is introduced and contextualized drawing on the author's own research and ...

What is the role of touch in inviting social interaction with robots? Forms of functional haptics in collaboration and socially assistive robots, for example, indicate one pathway. But what of more naturalistic and affective forms of touch that are more ...

The term multimodality has come to take on several somewhat different meanings depending on the underlying theoretical paradigms and traditions along with the purpose and context of use. The term is closely related to embodiment, which, in turn, is also ...

Hugs are complex affective interactions that often include gestures like squeezes. We present six new guidelines for designing interactive hugging robots, which we validate through two studies with our custom robot. To achieve autonomy, we investigated ...

Collaborative robots are increasingly entering industrial contexts and workflows. These contexts are not just locations for production, they are vibrant social and sensory environments. For better or for worse, their entry brings potential to reorganize ...

Emotion researchers have begun to converge on the theory that emotions are psychologically and socially constructed. A common assumption in affective robotics is that emotions are categorical brain-body states that can be confidently modeled. But if ...

Communication between people is characterized by a broad range of nonverbal cues. Transferring these cues into the design of robots and other artificial agents that interact with people may foster more natural, inviting, and accessible experiences. In ...

Despite their technical advancements, commercially available telerobots are limited in social interaction capabilities for both pilot and local users, specifically in nonverbal communication. Our group hypothesizes that the introduction of expressive ...