Gabriele Trovato

• Shibaura Institute of Technology

This volume provides a unique perspective on an emerging area of scholarship and legislative concern: the law, policy, and regulation of human-robot interaction (HRI). The increasing intelligence and human-likeness of social robots points to a challenging future for determining appropriate laws, policies, and regulations related to the design and u...

Poster presentation at the BERA Conference and WERA Focal Meeting 2024, University of Manchester, 9-12 September 2024.

(Background) This paper assesses students’ English-language writing levels by analysing their written work in a ‘history of Japan’ module, a humanities component in the Innovative Global Program. It is a research-based engineering degree program with course content taught in English within the College of Engineering at Shibaura Institute of Technol...

This study focuses on the usefulness of humanities components in higher education engineering programs, in the context of nurturing ‘global engineers’ with broad skillsets and cultural sensitivity. What is the significance of humanities courses, when it comes to the goal of equipping new engineers to succeed in today’s interconnected global society...

This paper addresses the hypothesis that the preference of a worker toward a work spot depends on attribute information such as her or his age and position and the type of work task on which she or he is working on that day. The system proposed in this paper is designed to estimate work-spot preferences using machine learning (ML) for activity-base...

As the world’s population ages, the issue of medical care and daily care for the elderly population is becoming more and more critical. While there are many efforts to ensure the physical health of older adults, there is a lack of effective solutions to the psychological problems caused by the lack of companionship. To solve this problem, we built...

This was an exploratory study to examine the effectiveness of the Spring and Fall courses in the Academic Year (AY) 2022 of ‘Science and Religion in Japan’ from an engineering education perspective. Technological innovations are occurring through the fusion of science and engineering fields into new cutting-edge disciplines. Such a world requires e...

In recent years, smart city has been attracting attention as a sustainable urban development. Smart monitoring is one of the key components of a smart city, and Light-Detection-and-Ranging (LiDAR) sensor is used as one of the sensors for smart monitoring. A 3D sensor network using multiple LiDAR sensors can be constructed to eliminate blind spots....

Intercultural studies are scarce but yet insightful to better understand reactions of older adults to human-like Android robot behavior. They help to see which reactions of participants are universal and which are country specific. Research with android robots and older adults has many results that are based on online research with pictures or on r...

With the problem of ageing population increasingly prominent, the burden of families, caregivers and medical workers to take care of older adults will be heavier. Social exclusion and cognitive dysfunctions make things worse, especially in times of a pandemic. One of the most effective approaches to solve these problems can be technology, which app...

Among the newest directions of research in the last few years, renewed interest in religion took place in the robotics community. Pioneering this interest, SanTO was the first ever Catholic robot to be made. Its realisation went together with the necessity of revising the theoretical bases that should properly identify what are SanTO and other robo...

This paper proposes an edge computing system that enables estimating physical activities of people in offices from time-series point-cloud data, obtained by using a light-detection-and-ranging (LIDAR) sensor network. The paper presents that the proposed system successfully constructs the model for estimating the number of typed characters from time...

New approaches to Uncanny Valley Analysis

The current world landscape in opinions and attitudes about robotics is highly variegated in different parts of the world. This landscape is a result of the sum of the effects of multiple factors, which date from millennia ago, as waves of philosophical thought, religion and historical events overlapped and allegedly influenced the concept of human...

Humanity has been dreaming of robots since the ancient times. Historically, robots — originally called automata — have been the products of technology and faith. The relationship between robots and religion has disappeared in the last two centuries, as science and religion parted ways, and have typically been seen in opposition. Nowadays, as robots...

This article presents the experience of a longlasting collaboration in robotics between the countries of Japan and Italy. The diversity of the approaches to robotics research and technology in the two countries and, at the same time, the similarity of some social drives for robotics progress have created a stimulus for generating new thinking about...

Religion and science are typically seen as far apart worlds. As a matter of fact, this is not true, as religion also has evolved thanks to new technologies, and robots in particular are objects that have been related to the sacred since ancient times. Recently, new interest is growing worldwide on this topic: however, even new creation of robots fo...

The original article was published in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 2017, 8(1), 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2017-0001 . The aim of this erratum is to report the results of a new analysis of the data.

Among the possible fields in human society in which robotics can be applied, the possibility of a robotic guard has been imagined since long time. Human guards usually perform a range of tasks in which a robot can provide help. Security personnel not only perform security tasks and patrolling services, but also have to interact with people, providi...

The concept of affordance perception is one of the distinctive traits of human cognition; and its application to robots can dramatically improve the quality of human-robot interaction (HRI). In this paper we explore and discuss the idea of "emotional affordances" by proposing a viable model for implementation into HRI; which considers allocentric a...

The assignment of gender to robots is a debatable topic. Subtle aspects related to gender, in a robot’s appearance, may create biased expectations of the robot’s abilities and influence user acceptance. The present research is a cross-cultural study involving more than 150 participants to investigate the perception of gender in robot design by mani...

Affordances are an important concept in cognition, which can be applied to robots in order to perform a successful human-robot interaction (HRI). In this paper we explore and discuss the idea of emotional affordances and propose a viable model for implementation into HRI. We consider “2-ways” affordances: perceived object triggering an emotion, and...

Robot appearance morphology can be divided in anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and functional. In previous recent work, a new catego-ry was introduced, called "theomorphic robots", in which robots carry the shape and the identity of a supernatural creature or object within a religion. This approach can bring some advantages for certain categories of use...

Security is one of the possible fields in human society in which robotics can be applied. Human guards usually perform a range of tasks in which a robot can provide help. A security company collaborated with us in the design and development of a robot that should serve in patrolling large indoor areas, interacting with humans, welcoming, providing...

The aim of this project is to present the research and development of a security robot (Robotman) for indoor spaces where there are people moving. The robot is able to perform activities as security guard, and at the same time interact with humans to welcome and provide information of the location. The robot was designed using industrial design met...

Robots, especially humanoids, are expected to perform human-like actions and adapt to our ways of communication in order to facilitate their acceptance in human society. Among humans, rules of communication change depending on background culture: greetings are a part of communication in which cultural differences are strong. Robots should adapt to...

The receptionist job, consisting in providing useful indications to visitors in a public office, is one possible employment of social robots. The design and the behaviour of robots expected to be integrated in human societies are crucial issues, and they are dependent on the culture and society in which the robot should be deployed. We study the fa...

In this paper we introduce IOmi: a life-sized female humanoid hostess robot intended for serving as guidance in indoor public spaces. Its design methodology, adapted from industrial design approaches, is intended to be applicable in different scenarios, considering the final users of the robot, the intended use of the agent, and the contextual envi...

This paper provides a new concept for the improvement of human–robot interaction (HRI) models: 'emotional affor-dances'. Emotional affordances are all the mechanisms that have emotional content as a way to transmit and/or collect emotional meaning about any context; it can include bodily expressions, social norms, values-laden objects or extended s...

As societies move towards integration of robots, it is important to study how robots can use their cognition in order to choose effectively their actions in a human environment, and possibly adapt to new contexts. When modelling these contextual data, it is common in social robotics to work with data extracted from human sciences such as sociology,...

Robot design is a subject of critical importance in a context in which robots are supposed to interact with humans. Head is particularly important, as it is the main part of the body that can convey emotions and other messages. In this paper we investigate the meaning conveyed by the use of coloured illumination. Through a survey, we obtained inter...

A complex relationship exists between people’s cultural background and their general acceptance towards robots. Previous studies supported the idea that humans may accept more easily a robot that can adapt to their specific culture. However, it is not clear whether between two robots which are identified as foreign robots because of their verbal an...

With the increasing demand for socially assistive robots in various domains, it becomes important to make robots that are able to start communication and attract people’s attention whenever necessary. Although verbal and non-verbal ways of communication have been studied before, adjusting them to changing situations of the environment is still a ch...

Robots are possible candidates for performing tasks as helpers in activities of daily living in the future: working as a receptionist is one possible employment. However, the way the receptionist robot should appear, sound and behave needs to be investigated carefully, in order to design a robot which is accepted and perceived in a positive way by...

In the near future, robots are expected to perform assistive tasks and do different kind of jobs. In particular, humanoid robots are possible candidates for being used as helpers in activities of daily living. One possible employment is working as a receptionist, providing useful indications to visitors in a public office. The design of how robots...

In human-robot interaction, it is important for the robots to adapt to our ways of communication. As humans, rules of non-verbal communication, including greetings, change depending on our culture. Social robots should adapt to these specific differences in order to communicate effectively, as a correct way of approaching often results into better...

This paper describes the development of a robotic head that has cartoon facial expression ability with comic marks. For communicating with humans, robots should have expressive facial expression ability for indicating their inner state. Our previous research suggests that robots can express its emotion clearly if it performs facial expressions that...

The design of what a robot could look like is a matter of growing importance. Variations of style, size, shape and colour open endless design possibilities. It is important to create a look that poses no visual uncanny valley effects on the human user and that is appropriate to potentially serve in different job areas in human society. In this pape...

This paper describes the development of a robotic head with ability to display marks commonly used in ‘‘manga’’ (Japanese comics). To communicate with humans, robots should have an expressive facial expression ability for indicating its inner state. Our previous research suggests that, robots can express its emotion clearly if it perform facial exp...

This paper describes a cross-cultural impression survey about the robotic facial expressions. For a fluent communication between humans and robots, robots should be able to express emotions with their face. Our previous research shows that robots should express facial expressions that adapt to the cultural background of their partners. First, we de...

Facial expressions are important for conveying emotions and communication intentions among humans. For this reason, humanoid robots should be able to perform facial expressions which represent their inner state in a way that is easy to understand for humans. Several humanoid robots can already perform a certain set of expressions, but their capabil...

As witnessed in several behavioural studies, a complex relationship exists between people’s cultural background and their general acceptance towards robots. However, very few studies have investigated whether a robot’s original language and gesture based on certain culture have an impact on the people of the different cultures. The purpose of this...

Emotion display through facial expressions is an important channel of communication. However, between humans there are differences in the way a meaning to facial cues is assigned, depending on the background culture. This leads to a gap in recognition rates of expressions: this problem is present when displaying a robotic face too, as a robot’s fac...

A complex relationship exists between national cultural background and interaction with robots, and many earlier studies have investigated how people from different cultures perceive the inclusion of robots into society. Conversely, very few studies have investigated how robots, speaking and using gestures that belong to a certain national culture,...

This paper describes the implementation in a walking humanoid robot of a mental model, allowing the dynamical change of the emotional state of the robot based on external stimuli; the emotional state affects the robot decisions and behavior, and it is expressed with both facial and whole-body patterns. The mental model is applied to KOBIAN-R, a 65-...

Communication between humans and robots is a very important aspect in the field of Humanoid Robotics. For a natural interaction, robots capable of nonverbal communication must be developed. However, despite the most recent efforts, robots still can show only limited expression capabilities. The purpose of this work is to create a facial expression...

Human-Robot Interaction is one of the biggest challenges in Humanoid Robotics. Interaction can be carried out through different channels, as humans can communicate through complex languages, including the use of non-verbal communication. Specifically, facial expressions are important for conveying emotions and communication intentions. Several huma...

Human-robot communication is a very important aspect in the field of Humanoid Robotics. Non-verbal communication is one of the components that make interaction natural. However, despite the most recent efforts, robots still can show only limited expression capabilities. The purpose of this work is to create a facial expression generator that can be...

Communication between humans and robots is a very critical step for the integration of social robots into society. Emotion expression through a robotic face is one of the key points of communication. Despite the most recent efforts, no matter how much expression capabilities improve, facial expression recognition is often hampered by a cultural div...

Fibre optic colonoscopy is usually performed with manual introduction and advancement of the endoscope, but there is potential for a robot capable of locomoting autonomously from the rectum to the caecum. A prototype robot was designed and tested. The robot colonic endoscope consists in a front body with clockwise helical fin and a rear body with a...