Eleanor Sandry

Curtin University · Department of Internet Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the importance of streaming within the context of commercial transmedia strategies. While cinemas have remained closed, studios have used streaming to extend audience engagement, and experiment with transmedia strategies attached to large intellectual properties. This paper seeks to determine how the pandemic affec...

The experimental tabletop robot Haru, used for affective telepresence research, enables a teleoperator to communicate a variety of information to a remote user through the robotic medium from a distance. However, the robot’s rich communicative modality poses some problems to the teleoperator. Based on their experience of controlling the robot, tele...

The tabletop robot Haru, used for affective telep-resence research, enables a teleoperator to communicate affects from a distance. The robot's expressiveness offers myriad ways of communicating affects through the execution of emotive routines. The teleoperator reacts to input modalities such as the user's facial expression, gestures and speech-bas...

Haru is a social, affective robot designed to support a wide range of research into human–robot communication. This article analyses the design process for Haru beta, identifying how both visual and performing arts were an essential part of that process, contributing to ideas of Haru’s communication as a science and as an art. Initially, the articl...

Human interactions with machines, including computers, consoles, smart devices and robots, are becoming more and more a part of everyday life. However, human–machine relations are often regarded as problematic for people, their interpersonal communication and human society more broadly. This paper provides an analysis of the characteristics that co...

John McCarthy and Peter Wright argue that people "don't just use technology;" they "live with it," which drives their decision "to suggest an approach to viewing technology as experience," rather than theorizing people's "experience with technology" [8]. This paper takes a step back, to reconsider the potential of analyzing what people do with tech...

This article theorises interactions between drivers, cars and their surroundings. It uses Don Ihde’s four human–technology relations – embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity and background – to analyse the ways in which human–car relationships develop through the process of driving. When driving non-autonomous cars, humans are engaged with cars in drive...

This paper analyzes creative practice including virtual music composition by a human and sets of computer programs, improvisation of music and dance in human-robot ensembles, and drawings produced by a human and a robotic arm. In all of these examples, the paper argues that creativity arises from a process of human-robot collaboration. Human influe...

This paper re-evaluates what constitutes a social robot by analysing how a range of different forms of robot are interpreted as socially aware and communicative. Its argument juxtaposes a critical assessment of the development of humanlike and animal-like robotic companions with a consideration of human relations with machinelike robots in working...

This chapter compares and contrasts the creation of humanoid robots with that of non-humanoid robots, identifying assumptions about communication that underlie the designs and employing a range of communication theories to analyse people’s interactions with the robots. While robots created in science and technology laboratories to communicate with...

This paper re-evaluates what constitutes a social robot by analysing how a range of different forms of robot are interpreted as socially aware and communicative. Its argument juxtaposes a critical assessment of the development of humanlike and animal-like robotic companions with a consideration of human relations with machinelike robots in working...

Robots and Communication examines human-robot interactions as models of communication. Robots are intriguing communicators because they are created in such a variety of forms. Some are built to appear humanlike, while others are not humanlike in any way, with many different designs existing in the continuum between these extremes. In order to explo...

Chapter 7 concentrates on exploring some ideas about the relationship between individuals and systems in thinking about communication. It discusses long-term interactions with robots outside of laboratories and art installations, identifying the value of respect and trust in collaborative partnerships with robots. This is developed into a considera...

Chapter 2 pauses the book’s consideration of robots to explore human-animal communication, since nonhuman animals are an important part of many peoples lives, acting for some not only as companions, but also as co-workers. Human-animal communication is described in various, often idealised, ways in fiction, but in real-life situations an analysis o...

In Chapter 4, the discussion moves beyond the initial encounter, to consider how dynamic interactions support communication with robots where those communications are also framed by a backstory. The focus is on how interactions can be understood in terms of both dialogue and overlapping continuous systems of interchange. Levinas’ theory is further...

Chapter 3 concentrates on theorising the encounter between human and robot, identifying moments when communication occurs, often using nonverbal communication channels at least initially. It discusses two versions of the Autonomous Light Air Vessels (ALAVs) art installation, within which blimp-like robots interact with one another and with visitors...

In Chapter 1, the pursuit of humanlike form is analysed in both fictional and real-life contexts. Amongst other justifications, people committed to building humanoid robots argue that these robots are best suited to work in human environments and to communicate with humans. Two paths in humanoid robot design are considered, but both involve underst...

Chapter 6 considers the implications of human communication with nonhuman others for the categories human, animal and machine. It argues that, while the boundaries between these types of being are becoming increasingly blurred, they are nevertheless still meaningful. The chapter goes on to consider ways of assigning agency to nonhuman others on the...

The short conclusion to this book explains the basis for its somewhat eclectic analysis, which uses a range of traditions of communication theory, as well as considering the overarching conceptions of discrete state and dynamic systems methodologies.

Chapter 5 considers what happens when humans and robots learn to complete tasks together as a team. In particular, it discusses human interactions with AUR, the robotic desk lamp. In this example, elements of verbal and nonverbal communication are combined in a dynamic communication that involves paying attention to each other as well as to the tas...

This paper explores conceptions of the immaterial in human engagements with technology and technological systems. It employs two different theories of interruption, one technical and the other philosophical, as a means to examine the renegotiations of human-technology relationships that occur when a system, previously considered immaterial and judg...

In this book chapter I analyse the science fiction series Fringe. The narratives of this series involve two alternate universes populated by different instances of the same characters. A consideration of interactions between these characters inspires novel ways to interrogate ideas relating to the importance of sameness and difference in communicat...

Communication is often thought of as a bridge between self and other, supported by what they have in common, and pursued with the aim of further developing this commonality. However, theorists such as John Durham Peters and Amit Pinchevski argue that this conception, connected as it is with the need to resolve and remove difference, is inherently ‘...