PHD Thesis: Investigating Perceptual Features For a Natural Human Humanoid Robot Interaction Inside a Spontaneous Setting

Since robots have become part of human life, several studies have been done with the aim of discovering salient social rules at the basis of the collaboration between human beings and humanoid robot (Human Humanoid Interaction - HHI). The purpose is to have a common environment where human and humanoid robot could engage a proficous "dialogue" in order to share the "sense of co-presence" for common empathic tasks and goals. The humanoid robot must be in a position to interact with the human, and learn day by day from external environment, exactly as it occurs in human beings in the real life. In this sense, significant progresses have been reached, having a strong impact in each aspect of every day life. In this way, is a big challenge having a humanoid robot that can exhibit a natural and empathic interaction with human beings, supporting a pseudo-realistic conversation and expressing human-like body emotions. To reach this ambitious goal, it was essentially conducted a sociological and psychological study (Sorbello et al., 2014) oriented to investigating collaborative and social features related to human robot interaction. So, supported by the results of this study it was possible to base all assumptions that support the design of the robust robotic architecture in order to reach the purposes of this thesis. The Sociological and Psychological study aims at a descriptive analysis of the main perceptual and social features of natural conditions of agents interaction, which can be specified by agents in human-humanoid robot interaction. A principled approach to human-robot interaction may be assumed to comply with the natural conditions of agents overt perceptual and social behaviour. To validate this research a minimalistic humanoid robot Telenoid it was used and human-robot interactions test have been conducted with two hundred people with no prior interaction experience with robot. After the definition of experimental conditions and setup, an analysis of significant variance correlation among dimensions in ordinary and goal guided contexts of interaction has been performed in order to prove that Perception and Believability are indicators of social interaction, that can increase the degree of interaction in human-humanoid interaction. I found that the sense of a shared environment is substantive for obtaining iv a satisfying interaction, where the distances between agents are constructed as perceptual-motor proxies of the regions where intentions and actions are available at a glance. The experimental results highlight that the Perceptual and Believability, as implicit social competences, could improve the meaningfulness and the natural- like sense of human-humanoid interaction in every day life task-driven activities and the Telenoid robot is perceived as an autonomous cooperative agent for a shared environment with human beings. One crucial result of my doctoral research is that subjects are significantly inclined to perceive the Telenoid as cooperative and competent even though this favorableness. Since the users perceived the behaviour of the Telenoid coherent and consistent, my results suggest that they are favourably incline to accept the humanoids behaviour as tuned to theirs and moved by the commitment to meet their demands. The idea of social robots, able to engage users for extended periods of time, received great attention from researchers in the recent years. In particular, in HHI, empathy is a important key in order to overcome the current limitations of social robots. In facts, a main defining characteristic of human social behavior is empathy. I support the hypothesis that the robots, in order to become personal companions or partners of our daily life in the near future, they need to know how to interact with us by means of empathy. One of the subgoal of this thesis is to overcome the state of loneliness of elderly people (understanding in which emphatic state is based the current HHI) using this minimalistic humanoid robot capable to exhibit a dialogue similar to what usually happens in real life between human beings. To validate my research, I have designed and developed a robotic architecture using the minimalistic humanoid robot Telenoid and I have conducted human- robot interactions tests with elderly people with no prior interaction experience with robot. During the experiments, elderly persons engaged a stimulated conversation with the humanoid robot. In order to engage a sort of empathic state in HHI, is necessary to catch the emotions that arise by conversation, so that, the humanoid robot can be able to interact socially and naturally with a human by expressing human-like body emotions in according with his interlocutor. The emotional architecture designed is based on an emotional conceptual space generated using the paradigm of Latent Semantic Analysis. The robot generates its overall affective behavior (Latent Semantic Behavior) taking into account the visual and phrasal stimuli of human user, the environment and his "personality", all encoded in his emotional conceptual space. The robot determines his emotion in according by all these parameters that influence and orient the generation of his behavior not predictable from the user. The goal of this approach is to obtain an affinity matching with humans. The robot, in this way, can exhibit a smoothly natural transition in his emotion, changing during the interaction with humans taking, also, into account the previous generated emotions. To validate the system, I implemented a distribute system on an Telenoid robot and on a Google Android Phone and I tested this social emotional interaction using the phone device as intelligent interface between human and robot in a complex scenario. The favourable acceptance of Telenoid behaviors by human users had oriented the research to the use of this android robot as: • Therapist on the processes of Social Integration among Children with DSA and their classmates. In particular I am interested in the study related to the sense of a person to be present in a remote environment with a robot ("Telepresence") and to the sense of a child to be present in a common environment with a robot where humans and humanoid are "accessible, available and subject to one another" (Goffman, 1966).The sense of "togetherness" between persons and Humanoid is "inherently social" (Biocca, 1992) and is highly connected with the concepts of particular behavior defined "sensible" (Chella et al., 2011a) because capable to express cognitive functionality. 
Priority goals of the study are: to gain greater flexibility and expressivity of mime and gaze in social interaction, learning the shifts and exchange in reciprocity, the refinement of verbal interaction and non-verbal, acquisition of skills and insights to make inferences about to view of the other, the possibility of developing the semantics and pragmatics of language areas of major weakness. The individual profile, of autistic child, make possible the use of autonomous robots with a remote control by the therapist. In order to test the relevance and the goals, I conducted experiments with 2 autistic children, 23 classmates and telenoid and nao robots. • Co-therapist for the parents of children with autism for the acceptance of diversity. Many existing research studies have shown good results relating to the important impact of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) (Prevedini et al., 2011) applied to parents of children with autism. The ACT has in Relation Frame Theory (RFT) its theoretical foundation. The overall behaviors of the parents may potentially benefit from treatment with a humanoid robot therapist instead of a real one. In particular in the present study, Telenoid humanoid robot (Ishiguro et al., 2013) is used as therapist to achieve a specific therapeutic objective: the acceptance of diversity from the parents of children with autism. Experimental results has been conducted adapting Hexaflex model of ACT protocol to Telenoid Robot in the therapy with parents. I conducted the preliminary test with 2 parents of autistic children and the humanoid robot Telenoid. • "Alter Ego"and "Partner" of the Locked-In patients affected by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis through the use of devices BCI (Brain Computer Interface). In consideration of the undamaged cognitive status in most ALS patients and the increasing improvement of humanoid robot technology, I hypothesize that a dedicated BCI robotic system might give an unprecedented contribute to the management of these patients. In particular, I do expect that a humanoid robot may act in different dimensions as motor substitution, virtual moving, shooting and emotional interaction and communications proxy interlocutor. I conducted the preliminary test with 2 locked-in patients and the Telenoid and nao robots (Experiments sessions have been supervised by psychologists) and I want to verify with this preliminary test whether this approach might improves the quality of life and disease status acceptance of patients and caregivers.