Karolina Zawieska

• PhD
• Researcher at Aarhus University

This paper focuses on the conviction that has been popular within parts of the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) community and beyond that social robots are or soon will become part of our everyday lives. Given the limited availability of social robots on the market and their evident absence in everyday environments, such a conviction is viewed here as...

This paper focuses on the topic of “everyday life” as it is addressed in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. It starts from the argument that while human daily life with social robots has been increasingly discussed and studied in HRI, the concept of everyday life lacks clarity or systematic analysis, and it plays only a secondary role in suppo...

After a couple of decades of conducting research in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), the way we understand, design and study human-robot interactions inevitably changes. Based on the preliminary findings of the ethnographic study involving roboticists, we argue that there has been a gradual shift in the HRI field from thinking of human engagement wit...

As the aim of the responsible robotics initiative is to ensure that responsible practices are inculcated within each stage of design, development and use, this impetus is undergirded by the alignment of ethical and legal considerations towards socially beneficial ends. While every effort should be expended to ensure that issues of responsibility ar...

Over the past two decades, ethical challenges related to robotics technologies have gained increasing interest among different research and non-academic communities, in particular through the field of roboethics. While the reasons to address roboethics are clear, why not to engage with ethics needs to be better understood. This paper focuses on a l...

This report presents the work of a European Commission Expert Group established to advise on specific ethical issues raised by driverless mobility for road transport. The report aims to promote a safe and responsible transition to connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) by supporting stakeholders in the systematic inclusion of ethical consideration...

Perspectives on Robots brings forth voices of different stakeholders engaged in or affected by new robot development to deliver a reality check on what robots are and what we can expect them to do. How will the robots developed today influence the nurses, teachers, physiotherapists, car mechanics, and cleaning staff of the future? And how are these...

This paper belongs to the area of roboethics and responsible robotics. It discusses the conceptual and practical separation of humans and robots in designing and implementing robots into real-world environments. We argue here that humans are often seen as a component that is only optional in design thinking, and in some cases even an obstacle to th...

This position paper discusses the question of incorporating roboethics into the roboticists' thinking about their research. On the one hand, there has been a growing recognition of the need to develop and advance the field of roboethics. On the other hand, for different reasons, a large part of the robotics community has still been reluctant to exp...

The paper describes concept behind IRYS social robot and a system of accompanying tools for application in the education and entertainment areas. Some important developments in these areas are pointed out. The concept of a multi-faceted solution of the system is described, which includes the robot and its high fidelity computer simulator. Main assu...

The relationship between human beings and AI appears to be on the cusp of foundational change: until recently the human ability to control technology was unquestioned, but now the trend suggests a declining power differential and the possibility of an inverse power relation-ship soon. AI is poised to exert increasing influence over human opportunit...

This paper provides a theoretical discussion of the use of anthropomorphic social robots in education. In particular, this work addresses the use of human-like robots in the role of meaning disruptors. While social robots are often used to imitate human roles to a varying degree, be it teachers, assistants or peers, the underlying assumption here i...

The relationship between human beings and AI appears to be on the cusp of foundational change: until recently the human ability to control technology was unquestioned, but now the trend suggests a declining power differential and the possibility of an inverse power relationship soon. AI is poised to exert increasing influence over human opportuniti...

This paper focuses on the concept of the human being and anthropomorphism developed in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. The underlying assumption is that robot users are often viewed as organisms who respond 'automatically' to anthropomorphic cues provided by the robotic systems rather than assign meanings to the robot's appearance and behav...

Depending on the ethical approach and the robotic system, there have been a variety of ethical issues identified in the field of robotics. If there is anything that may serve as a common denominator for different ethical concerns it is the question about the degree of human-likeness in robots. To what extent do robot features equal human characteri...

Given the complexity and novelty of autonomous robotic systems, obtaining an agreed-upon definition of LAWS constitutes a significant challenge. Depending on the approach, different definitions address different technical, legal, military and ethical aspects of the nature and use of LAWS. What these approaches have in common is a particular emphasi...

Computer and internet based questionnaires have become a standard tool in Human-Computer Interaction research and other related fields, such as psychology and sociology. Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) service is a new method of recruiting participants and conducting certain types of experiments. This study compares whether participants recruited th...

One of the main benefits of educational robotics is its potential to inspire curiosity and creativity in students. Creativity in educational robotics has been typically associated with the constructionist learning paradigm and the processes of building, programming and manipulating task-centric robotic platforms. On the other hand, there has been a...

The core of anthropomorphism is illusion, and hence, one of the key ethical concerns in social robotics refers to deception. A common way to address this issue is to study the degree to which it is possible to influence humans through anthropomorphic robot design and whether using deception provides benefits to robot users. This work argues that th...

Creativity as we know it, is relatively new to our culture but it has permeated a large variety of fields. Social robotics research is no exception. One of the main approaches towards creativity in robotics involves designing systems that imitate human creativity, in particular the arts. This work, however, discusses the potential of social robots...

Poster accepted to ICSR2014 Design Competition. The conference theme was "Social Intelligence".

Humans use a variety of technological artefacts to explore outer space, with robotics developing as an important field. Space exploration also provides an opportunity to develop social robotics. It has been shown that prolonged social isolation increases the tendency to anthropomorphise nonhuman agents. While it is recognised that an illusion of hu...

Mars rovers are an extension of the human body, which brings the human presence to another planet. In addition to human-centric senses such as vision and audio, they also extend human cognition into unknown spaces. This paper argues that Mars rovers should embrace not only the embodied but also the social aspect of a human being and judiciously emb...

Social human-robot interaction (HRI) has been widely recognised as one of the major challenges for robotics. This social aspect includes designing robots that embraces various humanlike characteristics regarding robot appearance and behaviour. Few HRI studies, however, address the core goal of human social interaction, i.e. the development of the s...

Emotional facial expressions are essential for agents. The LEGO company developed hundreds of facial ex-pressions for their Minifigures, which are often the centerpiece of LEGO construction. We investigate and present a summary of the development of the facial expression for all LEGO Minifigures that were released between 1975 and 2010. Our finding...

This paper discusses different approaches to anthropo-morphism in social robotics. While anthropomorphisation in robotics is often understood as the human tendency to perceive robots as humanlike in response to stimuli provided by machines, the authors argue that it is also an interpretative process which is highly subjec-tive and limited in durati...

This paper discusses people's willingness to suspend their beliefs of what is living in physical social robotics. Our attention focuses on users' perception of the machines they interact with, in particular how much fiction can persist in human-robot interaction. We expand on this concept of suspension of disbelief (SoD) in order to understand the...

'Best Student Video' Award http://www.aaaivideos.org/2012/illusion_of_intelligence/

One of the most intriguing challenges in social robotics is the creation of the illusion of life. When the machine enters our social space, its design refer-ences must be adapted to facilitate its integration and its ability to socially engage those it meets. While an explicitly designed form and function guide the intention to design and control t...