Being There: Humans and Robots in Public Spaces

How can telepresence via socially interactive robots help us to reclaim public space as a forum for good?

Funded by EPSRC · 2013–2017 · Social Robotics, Teleoperation.

Being There: Humans and Robots in Public Spaces was a multi-institutional EPSRC project exploring how people interact with robots and remote “proxy” presences in real-world environments. During the project, I investigated issues of social behaviour, trust, identity, and inclusion in shared public spaces. My paper "Shaking Hands and Cooperation in Tele-present Human-Robot Negotiation" attracted international press and was awarded best paper at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '15).

Partners: Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Oxford Internet Institute, Queen Mary University of London, University of Bath, University of Cambridge, University of Exeter, University of Oxford.
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Publications

Use of a Non-Human Robot Audience to Induce Stress Reactivity in Human Participants (2019). Computers in Human Behavior.

Investigating Social Evaluative Threat (SET) Using A Robotic Stress Testing Panel (2017). Psychosomatic Medicine.

Evaluating a mobile spontaneous eye blink tracker for use in tele-presence HRI as a low bandwidth social communicative cue (2016). In 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN '16).

Shaking Hands and Cooperation in Tele-present Human-Robot Negotiation (2015). In In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '15).

Workshop on Designing and Evaluating Social Robots for Public Settings (2015). International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2015.

Being there: humans and robots in public spaces (2013). In G. Herrmann, M. J. Pearson, A. Lenz, P. Bremner, A. Spiers, & U. Leonards (Eds.), Social Robotics: 5th International Conference, ICSR 2013, Bristol, UK.

Awards

Best Paper Award — ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2015) (2015)

Press

Why shaking hands is still a big deal — The Daily Telegraph (2015).

Handshakes so effective at building trust during business negotiations that they work even when one of the parties is a robot — The Independent (2015).

Shaking hands makes for better deals say scientists: Even if it's the cold metal grip of NAO the robot — Daily Mail (2015).

Why shaking hands matters (even when it's virtual) — University of Bath (2015).

Can humans get on with robots? — Financial Times (2014).

New project to measure human interaction with robots — University of Bath (2013).

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