Social Robots are (autonomous) systems that are designed to interact with humans (or other robots) following social behaviour and rules. Social Robots in a strict sense is physically embodied, whereas Social Agents may exists primarily as a representation on computer system.

This week will focus on designing systems that incorporate elements of (social) interaction between fully or semi-autonomous systems and humans, using a broad definition of the term. Such systems may need to adapt more to humans than the other way round.

One element of this is to communicate the intent of the robot (or the person controlling it) in a way that can be understood even by users without prior training that may accidentally encounter the system. In addition to allowing observers to perceive the system state, there is often a need to interact with the system by the same untrained users.

One way of doing this is create some kind of embodied human-like interface on the system, but there are other ways too. This way, humans may perceive the system having agency (even if it doesn't "think" in any traditional way ascribed to human agents).

Examples within scope could be systems like (or similar to or based on):

The week will generally follow the overall concept of the course, with (daily) build-measure-learn cycles.

This page will be continuously updated through the week; the schedules below are therefore only tentative.

Monday

09:00: Introductory lecture (recorded lecture)

09:45: Group work (discord; research examples of robots and their interfaces and create your own ideas)

13:00: Lunch break

14:00: Inspirational lecture on robots by Professor John Paulin Hansen (recorded lecture)

15:30: Group work (discord; create a lean canvas and landing page of your idea)

17:00: Hand-In to DTU Inside of your rough idea (lean canvas and landing page named GroupNN_xxx.pdf)

• You will this week create a system of your own choice that employs elements of social robotics, interfacing with users. You may look at some of the existing solutions mentioned above for ideas to get you started or read some of the papers listed below. Include proper literature study/research.

08:30: Lecture on engaging users (recorded lecture)

09:30: Each group prepare a 45-60 min "mini-workshop" (discord, own group rooms)

12:30: Lunch break

13:00: Mini workshops I (see below; hosted by uneven groups) 

14:00: Mini workshops II (see below; hosted by even groups)

15:00: Continued group work (discord)

17:00: Hand-In presentation to DTU Inside

Slides: Morning Lecture

Tuesday assignment:

• In the morning, prepare a mini-workshop using guidelines from the morning lecture.
• In the afternoon: Within the groups ( Gr 01-08 ), ( Gr 9-16 ) and ( Gr 17-25 ) uneven groups are hosting the first workshop, with even groups distributing their members between the hosting groups.
• In practice this would mean (for group 1-8) that groups 1,3,5,7 are hosting the first workshop with groups 2,4,6,8 distributing their members between those groups. E.i. if group 2 consists of 5 members then 1 member goes to 1,3,5,7 with the last member joining group 1. In group 4s case the ‘last’ person joins group 3 and so on.
• The workshops are expected to take place in the hosting groups room, with additional rooms being available for break-out groups (neighbouring empty rooms and the additional breakout rooms available (in the voice channels and breakout room categories)). Every Group x can freely use Breakout 2x-1 and 2x, i.e. Group 01 can use Breakout 01 and 02, Group 02 can use Breakout 03 and Breakout 04, Group 03 can use Breakout 05 and 06, etc. When running a Workshop, we additionally suggest that uneven groups also use the group rooms available to the even group one higher, and vice versa. This means that Group 01 can then additionally use Breakout 03 and 04, and Group 02 can use Breakout 01 and 02 when running workshops
• Then continue working on your ideas and start preparing prototypes for validation.
• Also prepare a presentation for next days "poster" session (some reuse of mondays handin is fine).

12:30: Lunch break

13:00: Group work (discord, TA and lecturer will visit groups)

Assignment

08:30: Brief session focused on evaluation and some feedback on reports (recorded lecture)

09:00: Mid-term feedback (use this form as a group) and group work (discord)

12:30: Lunch break

13:00: Group work (discord)

17:00: Hand-In (Presentations for Friday morning in pdf format!)

Slides: Morning Lectures

Name your file "GroupNN_title.pdf" (where title is a description of your work). Include also links to your "executable prototypes" and any video lins, but make sure you have all details of the wireframes readable in the PDF file you hand in.

For the group presentations, please give feedback using this google form.

Results will be visible here.

Wiese, E. et al (2017): Robots As Intentional Agents: Using Neuroscientific Methods to Make Robots Appear More Social (has a section on Designing Robots As Intentional Agents)

Idea.org: Co-Creation Session (for the ideation phase) part of Design Kit: The Human-Centered Design Toolkit

Runco et al (2011): Encyclopedia of Creativity