Astrid Weiss

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Researcher at TU Wien

Technology use is a socially embedded process, especially when it comes to older adults and care. However, the restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have limited social contact to protect vulnerable groups in care homes, and even if technology use has increased in other areas, there is little known about the potential uptake of communi...

Putting laypeople in an active role as direct expert contributors in the design of service robots becomes more and more prominent in the research fields of human–robot interaction (HRI) and social robotics (SR). Currently, though, HRI is caught in a dilemma of how to create meaningful service robots for human social environments, combining expectat...

The topic of trust has attracted increasing interest within HRI research, and is particularly relevant in the context of social robots and their assistance of older people at home. To make this abstract concept of trust more tangible for developers of robotic technologies and to connect it with older people’s living spaces and their daily practices...

Wie verändern sich gesellschaftliche Praktiken und die Chancen demokratischer Technikgestaltung, wenn neben Bürger*innen und Öffentlichkeit auch Roboter, Algorithmen, Simulationen oder selbstlernende Systeme einbezogen und als Beteiligte ernstgenommen werden? Die Beiträger*innen des Bandes untersuchen die Neukonfiguration von Verantwortung und Kont...

This paper presents the results of a user acceptance survey (based on the Technology Acceptance Model-TAM) of the humanoid social robot Pepper as a communication channel in different information retrieval scenarios in a business context. In total, 239 passers-by participated in the survey, which had a specific focus on the impact of perceived safet...

We develop a taxonomy that categorizes HRI failure types and their impact on trust to structure the broad range of knowledge contributions. We further identify research gaps in order to support fellow researchers in the development of trustworthy robots. Studying trust repair in HRI has only recently been given more interest and we propose a taxono...

In this paper, we discuss the development of robot use cases in an elderly care facility in the context of exploring the method of Integrative Social Robotics (ISR) when used on top of a user-centered design approach. Integrative Social Robotics is a new proposal for how to generate responsible, i.e. culturally and ethically sustainable, social rob...

In this article, we present results obtained from field trials with the Hobbit robotic platform, an assistive, social service robot aiming at enabling prolonged independent living of older adults in their own homes. Our main contribution lies within the detailed results on perceived safety, usability, and acceptance from field trials with autonomou...

Humanoid social robots have an increasingly prominent place in today’s world. Their acceptance in social and emotional human–robot interaction (HRI) scenarios depends on their ability to convey well recognized and believable emotional expressions to their human users. In this article, we incorporate recent findings from psychology, neuroscience, hu...

Robotics is both a technology and a factor that can be used to increase the interest of pupils and students in science and engineering. The project iBridge targets this issue and linked vocational schools and universities with older adults and students in order to increase their interest in innovative technology. This project is a cross-generationa...

This paper reports on the impact of a cross-generational project, which links seniors’ needs and high school students’ expertise with the development of the student’s self-efficacy, communication and collaboration skills as well as their interests. The project iBridge integrates in its framework several different out-school activities with the conc...

Social companion robots are intentionally developed and designed to support humans in useful tasks and to use social cues to establish a relationship to the user. However, so far no social companion robots existed outside of research labs to perform long-term studies "in the wild", exploring how this relationship actually evolves over time. In this...

We present the robot developed within the Hobbit project, a socially assistive service robot aiming at the challenge of enabling prolonged independent living of elderly people in their own homes. We present the second prototype (Hobbit PT2) in terms of hardware and functionality improvements following first user studies. Our main contribution lies...

Socially assistive agents, be it virtual avatars or robots, need to engage in social interactions with humans and express their internal emotional states, goals, and desires. In this work, we conducted a comparative study to investigate how humans perceive emotional cues expressed by humanoid robots through five communication modalities (face, head...

This paper reports about a User Experience (UX) study of comparing two industrial robotic arms (robot A and B) in the context of human-robot cooperation in a factory environment. Robot A was an off-the-shelf robotic arm controlled via touch-panel (remote-control). It was evaluated in a previous study by five industry workers using established behav...

When interaction with robots, people's cultural background show an impact on the robot's expected behavior, depending on how common robots are in these cultures. Such impact is especially notable when a robot is not able to fulfill a task and needs support from a user. We report the results of an online-based survey, investigating the effect of cul...

Older adults reported that a robot in their homes would be of great help if it could find objects that users regularly search for. We propose an interactive method to learn objects directly with the user and the robot and then use the RGB-D model to search for the object in the scene. The robot presents a turntable to the user for rotating the part...

This article reports three case studies on the usability and acceptance of an industrial robotic prototype in the context of human-robot cooperation. The three case studies were conducted in the framework of a two-year project named AssistMe, which aims at developing different means of interaction for programming and using collaborative robots in a...

This paper reports a case study on the User Experience (UX)of an industrial robotic prototype in the context of human-robot cooperation in an automotive assembly line. The goal was to find out what kinds of suggestions the assembly line workers, who actually use the new robotic system, propose in order to improve the human-robot interaction (HRI)....

Service robots for the domestic environment are intended to autonomously provide support for their users. However, state-of-the-art robots still often get stuck in failure situations leading to breakdowns in the interaction flow from which the robot cannot recover alone. We performed a multi-user Wizard-of-Oz experiment in which we manipulated the...

This volume is the proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction, held at the AISB Convention 2016, which took place on the 5th and 6th of April 2016, in Sheffield, U.K. Organised by Organised by Maha Salem (Google U.K.), Astrid Weiss (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Paul Baxter (Lincoln Unive...

Studies and concepts for social companion robots in therapy and care exist, however, they often lack the integration of convincing behavioral and social key mechanisms which enable a positive and successfull interaction experience. In this article we argue that synchrony and reciprocity are two key mechanisms of human interaction which affect both...

While the uncanny valley is definitely one of the most prominent theoretical assumptions in Human-Robot Interaction research, an inconsiderate appraisal of it will not benefit the research field and foster continuous exaggerations of its impact on robot acceptance. Thus, while we largely agree MacDorman & Entezari (2014) and acknowledge the importa...

When children and adults work together as partners throughout the design process in a collaborative and elaborative manner, children come up with a wide range of creative and innovative ideas. The 5-step plan is a holistic approach that empowers children as robotic product designers. Researchers as well as educators can use the approach to introduc...

In our work on facilitating human-computer interactions in the (smart) factory through contextual interfaces, we addressed the very specific user group of maintainers in a factory. Maintenance activities need to be flexible, quick, and cooperative, which, in turn, leads to specific challenges in research and designing interfaces for them. We presen...

We present a system for grasping unknown objects, even from piles or cluttered scenes, given a point cloud. Our method is based on the topography of a given scene and abstracts grasp-relevant structures to enable machine learning techniques for grasping tasks. We describe how Height Accumulated Features (HAF) and their extension, Symmetry Height Ac...

In this article, we present the user-centered development of the service robot IURO. IURO’s goal is to find the way to a designated place in town without any previous map knowledge, just by retrieving information from asking pedestrians for directions. We present the 3-years development process,which involved a series of studies on its appearance,...

Nontraditional environments offer a variety of methodological challenges when exploring cooperation under very specific contextual conditions. We understand contexts as challenging when they exhibit very specific/unique characteristics that need to be explored beyond traditional and already better-understood working/office settings. Moreover, these...

INTERACT is among the world’s top conferences in Human-Computer Interaction. Starting with the first INTERACT conference in 1990, this conference series has been organised under the aegis of the Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction of the UNESCO International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). This committee aims at devel...

One option to address the challenge of demographic transition is to build robots that enable aging in place. Falling has been identified as the most relevant factor to cause a move to a care facility. The Hobbit project combines research from robotics, gerontology, and human–robot interaction to develop a care robot which is capable of fall prevent...

The teacher-learner constellation is a special one in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), as it can essentially improve intuitive interaction with robots. In a 2 (background: programmer vs. non-programmer) × 3 (teacher: self vs. believed other vs. other) between participants experiment (n=48, counter-balanced in gender), participants kinesthetically tau...

Social roles are a design option for robots that behave in accordance with user expectations. We believe that robots have to exceed stereotypical role behaviors and dynamically provide roles that suit the people's living conditions in order to achieve long-term acceptance. We are introducing a new user-focused design method to develop social role r...

When living together in a household with a socially assistive robot, it can happen that the robot disturbs its owner by offering a service. One might argue that a social robot should act according to the social norms people expect of each other, but still then disturbances of daily routines are a challenging endeavor to address. We conducted a prel...

When we think of service robots for public spaces, we often consider human-like systems that socially interact with users in short-term and dynamically changing scenarios. Many design assumptions exist for this type of robot, but what about for a service robot that needs to interact with people in a very task/role-oriented manner? This paper presen...

Robots caring for the older population in care facilities and at home is an ongoing theme in HRI research. Research projects on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of these projects have the overall ambitious goal to increase the well-being of older adults and to enable them to stay at home as long as possible. In...

Our paper reports about an online study on robot facial expressions. On the one hand, we performed this study to assess the quality of the current facial expressions of two robot heads. On the other hand, we aimed at developing a simple, easy-to-use methodological variation to evaluate facial expressions of robotic heads. Short movie clips of two d...

Care robots for the ageing population usually support older adults at home or in a care facility in their daily activities, by monitoring their health status, mediating social communication, or assisting in fetch-and-carry tasks. However, the older adults' feelings about being cared for by a robot and the question what the robot possibly could do t...

This paper presents a seven-months field study on a persuasive ambient display in private households. The FORE-Watch aims at adjusting the consumption behavior of energy users in 24 multi-person households and persuading them to change their timing of consumption activities; half of them were shown a forecast of the occupancy rate of the local ener...

Maintaining machines in semiconductor factories is a challenging task that, so far, is not sufficiently supported by mobile interactive technology. This paper describes the early development of a maintainer support system. Our goal was to develop a user-experience prototype, which consists of a mobile and a situated interface, to support maintenanc...

One option to face the aging society is to build robots that help old persons to stay longer at home. We present Hobbit, a robot that attempts to let users feel safe at home by preventing and detecting falls. Falling has been identified as the highest risk for older adults of getting injured so badly that they can no longer live independently at ho...

When researchers develop robots based on a user-centered design approach, two important questions might emerge: How does the representation of robots in science fiction and the mass media impact the general attitude naïve users have towards robots and how will it impact the attitude towards the specifically developed robot? Previous research has sh...

This paper describes a User Experience (UX) study on industrial robots in the context of a semiconductor factory cleanroom. We accompanied the deployment of a new robotic arm, without a safety fence, over one and a half years. Within our study, we explored if there is a UX difference between robots which have been used for more than 10 years within...

This chapter discusses the potential meaning of the term social in relation to human-agent interaction. Based on the sociological theory of object-centred sociality, four aspects of sociality, namely forms of grouping, attachment, reciprocity, and reflexivity are presented and transferred to the field of human-humanoid interaction studies. Six case...

Model-driven generation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) is desirable, since it potentially allows to save time and effort in comparison to manual development. Current state-of-the-art GUI generation approaches support fully automatic GUI generation for different devices, but the usability of the resulting GUIs is typically rather low. This work...

To enhance successful cooperation in human-robot collaboration tasks, many factors have to be considered. We assume, that for specific levels of task complexity, there is always one complementing input modality which increases the corresponding user satisfaction and performance. In order to identify the ideal mix of these elements, we present two e...

Research in Wearable Computing recently gained momentum in industrial settings. We report on the process of rapid experience prototyping for the factory context, in specific the cleanroom of a semiconductor factory, to analyse user experience issues with wearable devices. The cleanroom context poses specific design requirements, which challenge the...

This paper reports about a pilot study of a social media platform, based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 within a large international company, having different sites in Europe, Asia and the US. The platform should enhance the communication between departments and interdepartmentally. The goal of this pilot study is to accompany the introduction of thi...

Reporting activities of maintenance work in semiconductor factories are currently based primarily on computing systems. However, usability problems and the multiplicity of tools hinder work instead of supporting it. We present a requirement analysis of complex maintenance activities carried out with maintainers in the cleanroom of a semiconductor f...

This case study reports on the pilot phase of a social media platform, based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010, which should enhance the communication between and within departments of an internationally operating semiconductor manufacturing company, which has different sites in Europe, the US, and Asia. Our research group monitored this pilot phase in...

The presented study is the starting point for a series of task guidance studies, which are dedicated to ease the working conditions for operators in the cleanroom of a semiconductor factory. We want to clarify the question how to best indicate the occurrence of an irregular work operation that interrupts the main work stream. On the one hand such a...

How does the placement of an ambient persuasive display for modifying energy consumption in the household change over a period of six months? There is limited knowledge about where individuals place such displays in their private households. Location is essential for the sustainable usage of persuasive displays. There is a need to gain insights int...

Ambient persuasive displays could be a potential way to raise awareness and lower the energy consumption in private households. There already exist a range of products in this direction. However, none of them seem to have any longterm persuasive effects. We argue that this effect could only be enabled by involving providers and potential users in t...

Whereas much of the state-of-the-art research in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) investigates task-oriented interaction, this paper aims at exploring what people talk about to a robot if the content of the conversation is not prede�ned. We used the robot head Furhat to explore the conversational behavior of people who encounter a robot in the public...

In recent years there has been a tendency towards industrial robots which are cheaper in acquisition and need less expert programming and maintenance. Several approaches use a combination of humanoid and industrial robot elements. This new direction away from dull, dirty and dangerous to a functional “buddy” robot enables new HRI scenarios within t...

In the research field of Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) choosing the right input modality is a crucial aspect for successful cooperation, especially for different levels of task complexity. In this paper we present a preliminary study we conducted in order to investigate the correlation between input modalities and task complexity. We assume that...

Research in ambient intelligent systems faces a challenging endeavor, namely the evaluation of user experience of ambient displays. Due to the fact that ambient displays should be unobtrusive, it is hard for users to appraise them on a reflective level (i.e. interviews and questionnaires). In this paper we present a methodological approach that com...

It is the aim of this paper to show on a meta-level how studies in public places can contribute to positively influence people's attitude towards robots. By means of examining objective and subjective data gathered in the lab and data from field studies, it will be shown how people's experiences with a robot outside the sheltering laboratory surrou...

Feedback is to Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) as Cinderella is to her bad stepmother and stepsisters. Feedback happens all the time between the involved parties e.g. robot-robot or human-robot, but receives little attention. Accordingly the important role and the need of feedback is undeniable. Our basic research concentrates on robots within indust...

It is the aim of our research to explore how multimodal feedback can help a robot to carry out itinerary requests effectively and satisfactory for a human interaction partner. We conducted two studies to evaluate the feedback setup of the Interactive Urban Robot (IURO), which navigates through public space autonomously and finds its way by asking p...

In this paper we report about a methodological approach to cooperatively evaluate the usability of two different teach pendants for teaching a robotic arm. Two case studies were conducted to compare an already established teach pendant with a novel prototype which applies a different interaction paradigm. Involved in these studies were the company...

We carry out a set of experiments to assess collaboration between human users and robots in a cross-cultural setting. This paper describes the study design and deployment of a video-based study to investigate task-dependence and cultural-background dependence of the personality trait attribution on a socially interactive robot. In Human-Robot Inter...

The Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research field has developed more and more over the past 10 to 20 years. It is still a relatively young community, which is in the process of developing its characteristics, such as being interdisciplinary, innovative, responsible, technical, and many others. Similarly, like in the development of the Human-Computer...

This paper reports about a User Experience (UX) study on industrial robotic arms in the context of a semiconductor factory cleanroom. The goal was to find out (1) if there is a difference in the UX between robots used over years with a strict security perimeter (robot A) and a newly installed robot without security perimeter (robot B), and (2) if t...

This paper suggests new methodology for measuring User Experience in HRI. We suggest using implicit attitude to predict User Experience (Affect). Therefore we show a first validation study. The study uses short videos of a robot (IURO - Interactive Urban Robot) approaching a person and asking for the. IURO either approached a walking or a standing...

The results from an empirical study on the impact of a robot's approach trajectories on its social acceptance are presented. An online survey presenting short videos of a robot (IURO - Interactive Urban RObot) approaching a person in a public space and asking for help was shown to the users. IURO either approached a walking or standing person. The...

This work is a first step towards an integration ofmultimodality with the aim to make efficient use of both human-like, and non-human-like feedback modalities in order to optimize proactive information retrieval from task-related Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in human environments. The presented approach combines the human-like modalities speech an...

We propose a daylong workshop at CSCW2012 on the topic collaboration in challenging and difficult environments, which are to our understanding all contexts, which go beyond traditional working/office settings topic. Examples for these environments can be the automotive context or the context of a semiconductor factory, which show very specific cont...

It is greatly aknowledged in the CSCW community that supportive technology needs to adapt to its contextual usage to increase the collaboration between different user groups. Based on a Contextual Inquiry (CI) in the cleanroom in a semiconductor factory, we identified the maintainers working routines and their usage patterns with various maintenanc...

Könnten Roboter das Leben von Senioren verbessern? Eine häufige Annahme ist, dass der Einsatz von Robotern in der Altenhilfe ein Lösungsansatz für die zunehmende Alterung unserer Gesellschaft sein könnte. Aus diesem Grund gibt es immer mehr Forschungsprojekte zu diesem Thema, aber auch eine wachsende Industrie, die Roboter für die Altenpflege entwi...

Investigating how technologies are experienced in a sensitive context is a difficult procedure. It gets even more critical if you try to explore the usage of existing technologies in an industrial context, in which entering the context is not possible and different social hierarchies make honest response behaviour challenging. We present a creative...

Social acceptance of robots in public space implicitly requires a user-centered approach in the development phase of a robotic system. One of the most popular tools used by interaction designers in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) are the persona-based scenarios. Recently, they find their way more and more into HRI research. This paper...

Besides saving energy, using it at the right time (i.e. when there is a supply surplus, and the power is produced by sustainable power sources such as hydroelectricity or wind) is an important possibility to achieve positive effects for the environment. To enable the user to align their behavior with the dynamics of the energy generation they need...

The success of the next-generation of interactive TV systems will depend on the type and form of user interaction these systems can support. New services like social TV, direct image, and data up- and download from the set-top box, connectivity of the iTV system to the PC and other mobile media devices, pose the question of how to support security,...

The Christian Doppler Laboratory for Contextual Interfaces is a cooperative research lab dealing with interaction designs of contextual interfaces in the automotive area and the cleanroom of a semiconductor factory. This paper describes the research approach and example activities conducted in the laboratory.

This paper presents the contextual analysis of the user requirements for a mobile navigation robot in public space. Three human-human interaction studies were conducted in order to gain a holistic understanding of the public space as interaction context for itinerary requests. All three human-human requirement studies were analyzed with respect to...

A previously conducted study on human-human communication in the context of itinerary requests in public space resulted in “feedback” being the most powerful influencing factor regarding the successfulness of conversations between humans. In this paper, we report on a subsequently performed Wizard-of-Oz (WOz) experiment that applied the results fro...

This paper presents notions of a novel human-centered, integrated production system based on the intelligent cooperation between humans, robots and automation systems in the clean room context. In semiconductor manufacturing and in particular for short-term interactions with robotic systems like turn taking (an operator performs some work, hands ov...

Increasing the efficiency in production while maintaining a low error rate is one of the key goals of semiconductor factories. Often this is achieved on a technical level but there is significant potential on the human side as well. By reducing the complexity of the work environment and presenting the right information at the right time and place o...