PRE2023 3 Group4

Group members

Name	Student Number	Current Study program	Role or responsibility
Margit de Ruiter	1627805	BPT	Note-taker
Danique Klomp	1575740	BPT	Contact person
Emma Pagen	1889907	BAP	End responsible Wiki update
Liandra Disse	1529641	BPT	Planner
Isha Rakhan	1653997	BPT	Contact person
Naomi Han	0986672	BCS	Programming responsible

Introduction to the course and project

Problem statement

Modern media is filled with images of highly sophisticated robots that speak, move and behave like humans would. The many movies, plays and books that are created speculate that these types of robots will be integrating into our daily lives in the near future. The idea of robots becoming increasingly more like humans is thus integrated into in our ideas. However, modern technology has not yet been able to catch up to this futuristic idea of what an artificial agent, like a robot, is able to do. This delay mainly comes from the lack of knowledge on how to replicate the behavior of humans in the hardware and programming of the artificial agents. One of the main areas that has been of growing interest is the implementation of emotions in robots and other artificial agents. Emotions of a human are not easy to replicate, as they consist of many different factors that make up the emotion. The research that will be presented in this wiki will also focus on emotions, but it will look at how these emotions have an effect on the acceptance of the robot. The question that will be answered is:

“Does a match between the displayed emotion of a social robot and the content of the robots spoken message influence the acceptance of this robot?”

Objectives

As a group, we outlined our objectives for our project. With our main objectives being contributing to knowledge about the role of emotions in social robot interactions and extending knowledge on the reliability of the acceptance measurement with the focus on young adults. As the Almere model is yet to be extensively tested on younger adults. In order to achieve these two main objectives, we have some smaller objectives that will guide us towards them. These concern conducting lab research and doing statistical and qualitative data analysis that are related to social and psychological research. Next to that, we are a multidisciplinary group, and are aiming towards working together in such a manner that every single group member is able to bring their own discipline to the table. And finally, properly programming and working with a robot is crucial to achieve our main objectives.  

Users

The users in this research are young adolescents. They have specific needs and require certain characteristics of the social robot in order to have a pleasant social interaction. In general, these users would like the robots to be authentic, imperfect, and to be active listeners. Active listening helps to build trust between the human and the robot. Also, by listening and showing that the robot understands the conversation and the emotional state of the person, the robot can adapt its interactions according to this, which will lead to a more personalized and meaningful interaction. The users require the robot to be easy to understand and it should have an intuitive interface. As already mentioned above a bit, the users like robots that can understand and respond to human emotions in order to have a meaningful interaction.

Planning

Each week, there will be a mentor meeting on Monday morning followed by a group meeting. Another group meeting will be held on Thursday afternoon and by Sunday afternoon the wiki will be updated for work done that week (weekly deliverable).

Week 1

• Introduction to the course and team
• Brainstorm to come up with ideas for the project and select one (inform course coordinator)
• Conduct literature review
• Specify problem statement, user group and requirements, objectives, approach, milestones, deliverables and planning for the project

Week 2

• Get confirmation for using a robot lab, and which robot  
• Ask/get approval for conducting this study
• Create research proposal (methods section of research paper)
• If approval is already given, start creating survey, programming the robot or creating video of robot

Week 3

• If needed, discuss final study specifics, including planning the session for conducting the study
• If possible, finalize creating survey, programming the robot or creating video of robot
• Make consent form
• Start finding and informing participants

Week 4

• Final arrangements for study set-up (milestone 1)

• Try to start with conducting the study  

Week 5

• Finish conducting the study (milestone 2)

Week 6

• Conduct data analysis
• Finalize methods section, such as including participant demographics and incorporate feedback
• If possible, start writing results, discussion and conclusion sections

Week 7

• Finalize writing results, discussion and conclusion sections and incorporate feedback, all required research paper sections are written (milestone 3)
• Prepare final presentation

Week 8

• Give final presentation (milestone 4)
• Finalize wiki (final deliverable)
• Fill in peer review form (final deliverable)