Magazine: Current Issue
Current Issue
COLUMN: INIT
Readying Robots for the Home: The Evolution of Human-Robot Interaction
By Safinah Ali, Daniella DiPaola
SECTION: Features
QWriter: A Reinforcement Learning-Based Robot for Early Literacy Acquisition
Robot-assisted language learning produces comparable results to human tutors in a long-term study with elementary school children.
By Anara Sandygulova, Aida Amir, Nurziya Oralbayeva, Zhansaule Telisheva, Aida Zhanatkyzy, Aidar Shakerimov, Shamil Sarmonov, Arna Aimysheva
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Designing Personalized Pedagogical AI Agents to Support Children's Exploratory Learning
Can a social robot support children to become better learners? How personalizing a social robot's behavior can encourage learner exploration.
By Xiajie Zhang
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Social Robots That Promote Soft Skills in Students
Social robots are coming to classrooms, but they can do more than teach new content. They can implement validated pedagogy to promote soft skills such as curiosity, growth mindset, and collaboration.
By Goren Gordon
Child-Robot Interaction in Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Resolutions
Robots are increasingly permeating the healthcare system, but limited studies exist in the field of child-robot interaction in healthcare.
By Iroju Olaronke
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Living With Robotic Companions for Better Psychological Well-Being
We live in a world where interactive devices are always around. But can these technologies become more than just useful tools for us? What if there was a social robot that could act as a helpful companion and help people improve their psychological well-being in their homes?
By Sooyeon Jeong
Working Together Toward ikigai: Co-Designing Robots That Can Help Us Achieve Meaning and Purpose in Life
Robots are commonly envisioned as assisting older adults in physical tasks or providing companionship. But there has been less focus on helping older adults achieve more intangible, but equally important, aspects of wellness, such as a feeling of purpose and meaning in life. Here, we share our experiences working and learning together with older adults on developing a robot that can support their achievement of ikigai---meaning or purpose in life.
By Long-Jing Hsu, Waki Kamino, Weslie Khoo, Katherine Tsui, David Crandall, Selma Šabanović
Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks
Boston Dynamics, famous for their robot quadruped dog "Spot," takes new inspiration from some "not-so-new" sources.
By Leland Hepler, David Robert
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Understanding Our Robots With the Help of Human-Centered Explainable AI
Insights from the field of human factors can help us design human-centered explanations that enable effective human-robot interaction. Studying explanation techniques according to these human factors will be critical in understanding their efficacy across diverse contexts.
By Lindsay Sanneman
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The Importance of Memory for Language-Capable Robots
Robots need to be able to communicate with people through natural language. But how should their memory systems be designed to facilitate this communication?
By Rafael Sousa Silva, Zhao Han, Tom Williams
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Power, Equity, and Building Better Robots
As HRI researchers, designers, and developers we need to reflect on the ways that power pervades the social contexts we're designing for and in. What can we do, with the power we have as designers, to produce more equitable HRI?
By Katie Winkle
SECTION: Profile
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Lessons from Ph.D. Fieldwork: A Conversation with Dr. Azra Ismail
By Vishal Sharma, Azra Ismail
DEPARTMENT: Labz
MOPS Research Group Empowers Communities: Baldwin Wallace University
By Julia Gersey