Browsing by Author "Steinicke, Frank"

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    Evaluation of Proxemics in Dynamic Interaction with a Mixed Reality Avatar Robot
    (The Eurographics Association, 2019) Zhang, Jingxin; Janeh, Omar; Katzakis, Nikolaos; Krupke, Dennis; Steinicke, Frank; Kakehi, Yasuaki and Hiyama, Atsushi
    We present a mixed-reality avatar arm swing technique to subtly communicate the velocity of a robotic it is attached to. We designed and performed a series of studies to investigate the effectiveness of this method and the proxemics when humans have dynamic interaction with the avatar robot (Figure 3). Our results suggest that robot moving speed has a significant effect on the proxemics between human and mixed-reality avatar robot. Attaching an avatar to the robot did not have a significant influence on the proxemics compared to a baseline situation (robot only). Participants reported that this method helped improve perception and prediction on the robot state. Participants also commented favourably regarding its potential applications like noticing a tiny ground robot. Our work offers reference and guidelines for external expression of the robot state with mixed reality.
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    Insights From a Study on Subtle Mimicry in Human-Agent Interaction
    (The Eurographics Association, 2023) Ungruh, Robin; Schmidt, Susanne; Norouzi, Nahal; Steinicke, Frank; Jean-Marie Normand; Maki Sugimoto; Veronica Sundstedt
    In social interactions, people tend to imitate the behavior of others and to perceive dialogues in which they are imitated to be more natural and smooth. This process of mimicry is not limited to non-verbal behavior, but also involves subtle adaptation of one's own speech style to the communication partner. Although being a natural phenomenon in human-human interaction, it is not yet common for virtual agents to simulate such behavior by adapting their speech style to that of the user. This work presents a user study (N = 48) that explores the participants' perception of a virtual agent mimicking formal and informal speech. The majority of participants preferred agents with a matching speech style over those with a mismatching one. Other positive results of mimicry that were previously found in human-human interaction could not be replicated. To inform other researchers studying subtle agent behavior about possible factors that might dominate participants' perception of an agent, we present the results of a thorough content analysis of qualitative user feedback. From the salient themes, such as mismatched emotionality in language and speech, affordances of agents, and expectations of the agent's role in interactions, we derive recommendations for the design of future user studies of subtle (verbal and non-verbal) agent behavior.
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    Virtual Fixtures in VR - Perceptual Overlays for Assisted Teleoperation, Teleprogramming and Learning
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Krupke, Dennis; Zhang, Jianwei; Steinicke, Frank; Bruder, Gerd and Yoshimoto, Shunsuke and Cobb, Sue
    Current advances in mixed reality (MR) technology achieves both, making the sensations more immersive and plausible, but also increase the utilization of these technologies in robotics. Their low-cost and the low effort to integrate such a system in complex facilities makes them interesting for industrial application. We present an efficient implementation of ''virtual fixtures'' [BR92] and the evaluation in a task of three different difficulties. Finally, it is discussed if the method is successfully implemented without real physical barriers and if human performance is effected in teleoperation or teleprogramming of industrial robots.