Sophia C. Steinhaeusser

University of Wuerzburg | JMU · Department of Computer Science

The design of virtual environments (VEs) can strongly influence users’ emotions. These VEs are also an important aspect of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) exergames – training system that can inspire athletes to train in a highly motivated way and achieve a higher training intensity. VR-based training and rehabilitation systems can increase a user’s...

Storytelling is a long-established tradition and listening to stories is still a popular leisure activity. Caused by technization, storytelling media expands, e.g., to social robots acting as multi-modal storytellers, using different multimodal behaviours such as facial expressions or body postures. With the overarching goal to automate robotic sto...

Decision-making is an important ability in our daily lives. Decision-making can be influenced by emotions. A virtual environment and objects in it might follow an emotional design, thus potentially influencing the mood of a user. A higher visual angle on a particular stimulus can lead to a higher emotional response to it. The use of immersive virtu...

The integration of robots as storytellers, game masters or embodied characters into games is a novel technique for game design yet restricted to human-robot interaction (HRI) research. To facilitate the usage of robots, a plugin for a common game engine is needed. NarRobot was developed to provide an easy to use interface and seamless integration o...

This field study investigates the influence of social robots as a hotel assessment tool on hotel ratings. Based on media equation theory, it is assumed that social robots increase quality and quantity of hotel ratings by triggering politeness rules. We developed a robot application that allowed hotel guests to submit ratings on site together with t...

From teaching technical skills to telling bedtime stories, social robots support various edutainment tasks that require smooth communication. Previous studies often emphasized the importance of the autonomy of social robots for those tasks. However, the cabling of robots with power sources and/ or host computers is often required due to technical r...

Virtual environments and games are often used to evoke positive emotions. Contrary the survival horror genre aims to induce negative feelings in players. The effects of playing fear-inducing games in virtual reality (VR) is rather unexplored, since research mainly focuses on positive emotions. To investigate the relationship between immersion, pres...

Virtual environments (VEs) can evoke and support emotions, as experienced when playing emotionally arousing games. We theoretically approach the design of fear and joy evoking VEs based on a literature review of empirical studies on virtual and real environments as well as video games’ reviews and content analyses. We define the design space and id...

Reading is an essential ability and a cornerstone of education. However, learning to read can be challenging for children. To scaffold young learners, a number of reading interventions were developed, including a syllable-based approach in German, which has proven to be successful, but resource and time consuming through individual interaction by e...

The users' positive or negative attitude towards robots is a crucial factor in human-robot interaction (HRI). We conducted a preliminary online study comparing a storytelling scenario including personal respectively impersonal framing to investigate effects of the robot's self-introduction on the users' attitude towards and likeability of the robot...

Enhancing learning scenarios with social robots, as well as gamification elements, has been shown to positively influence motivation, engagement, or even both. However, they have not been combined in a learning environment. For this contribution, we created a learning environment for students in higher education and implemented additions (social ro...