Malte Jung

Jan Ondras, Abrar Anwar, Tong Wu et al.

We develop data-driven models to predict when a robot should feed during social dining scenarios. Being able to eat independently with friends and family is considered one of the most memorable and important activities for people with mobility limitations. While existing robotic systems for feeding people with mobility limitations focus on solitary dining, commensality, the act of eating together, is often the practice of choice. Sharing meals with others introduces the problem of socially appropriate bite timing for a robot, i.e. the appropriate timing for the robot to feed without disrupting the social dynamics of a shared meal. Our key insight is that bite timing strategies that take into account the delicate balance of social cues can lead to seamless interactions during robot-assisted feeding in a social dining scenario. We approach this problem by collecting a Human-Human Commensality Dataset (HHCD) containing 30 groups of three people eating together. We use this dataset to analyze human-human commensality behaviors and develop bite timing prediction models in social dining scenarios. We also transfer these models to human-robot commensality scenarios. Our user studies show that prediction improves when our algorithm uses multimodal social signaling cues between diners to model bite timing. The HHCD dataset, videos of user studies, and code are available at https://emprise.cs.cornell.edu/hrcom/

Eike Schneiders, Christopher Fourie, Stanley Celestin et al.

Successful entrainment during collaboration positively affects trust, willingness to collaborate, and likeability towards collaborators. In this paper, we present a mixed-method study to investigate characteristics of successful entrainment leading to pair and group-based synchronisation. Drawing inspiration from industrial settings, we designed a fast-paced, short-cycle repetitive task. Using motion tracking, we investigated entrainment in both dyadic and triadic task completion. Furthermore, we utilise audio-video recordings and semi-structured interviews to contextualise participants' experiences. This paper contributes to the Human-Computer/Robot Interaction (HCI/HRI) literature using a human-centred approach to identify characteristics of entrainment during pair- and group-based collaboration. We present five characteristics related to successful entrainment. These are related to the occurrence of entrainment, leader-follower patterns, interpersonal communication, the importance of the point-of-assembly, and the value of acoustic feedback. Finally, we present three design considerations for future research and design on collaboration with robots.

Jess Hohenstein, Dominic DiFranzo, Rene F. Kizilcec et al.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now widely used to facilitate social interaction, but its impact on social relationships and communication is not well understood. We study the social consequences of one of the most pervasive AI applications: algorithmic response suggestions ("smart replies"). Two randomized experiments (n = 1036) provide evidence that a commercially-deployed AI changes how people interact with and perceive one another in pro-social and anti-social ways. We find that using algorithmic responses increases communication efficiency, use of positive emotional language, and positive evaluations by communication partners. However, consistent with common assumptions about the negative implications of AI, people are evaluated more negatively if they are suspected to be using algorithmic responses. Thus, even though AI can increase communication efficiency and improve interpersonal perceptions, it risks changing users' language production and continues to be viewed negatively.

Houston Claure, Yifang Chen, Jignesh Modi et al.

How should a robot that collaborates with multiple people decide upon the distribution of resources (e.g. social attention, or parts needed for an assembly)? People are uniquely attuned to how resources are distributed. A decision to distribute more resources to one team member than another might be perceived as unfair with potentially detrimental effects for trust. We introduce a multi-armed bandit algorithm with fairness constraints, where a robot distributes resources to human teammates of different skill levels. In this problem, the robot does not know the skill level of each human teammate, but learns it by observing their performance over time. We define fairness as a constraint on the minimum rate that each human teammate is selected throughout the task. We provide theoretical guarantees on performance and perform a large-scale user study, where we adjust the level of fairness in our algorithm. Results show that fairness in resource distribution has a significant effect on users' trust in the system.