Skilled motor behavior is critical in many human daily life activities and professions. The design of robots that can effectively teach motor skills is an important challenge in the robotics field. In particular, it is important to understand whether the involvement in the training of a robot exhibiting social behaviors impacts on the learning and the experience of the human pupils. In this study, we addressed this question and we asked participants to learn a complex task - stabilizing an inverted pendulum - by training with physical assistance provided by a robotic manipulandum, the Wristbot. One group of participants performed the training only using the Wristbot, whereas for another group the same physical assistance was attributed to the humanoid robot iCub, who played the role of an expert trainer and exhibited also some social behaviors. The results obtained show that participants of both groups effectively acquired the skill by leveraging the physical assistance, as they significantly improved their stabilization performance even when the assistance was removed. Moreover, learning in a context of interaction with a humanoid robot assistant led subjects to increased motivation and more enjoyable training experience, without negative effects on attention and perceived effort. With the experimental approach presented in this study, it is possible to investigate the relative contribution of haptic and social signals in the context of motor learning mediated by human-robot interaction, with the aim of developing effective robot trainers.
Task-Space Control Interface for SoftBank Humanoid Robots and its Human-Robot Interaction Applications
SoftBank Robotics Europe（软银欧洲机器人公司）；University of Montpellier–CNRS LIRMM（蒙彼利埃大学-法国国家科学研究中心蒙彼利埃信息与机器人实验室）；Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学智能机器人与系统高精尖创新中心）；CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory（法国国家科学研究中心-日本产业技术综合研究所联合机器人实验室）
Would you let a humanoid play storytelling with your child? A usability study on LLM-powered narrative Human-Robot Interaction
Humanoid Sensing and Perception, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT)（人形感知与感知，意大利技术研究院）；Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction, IIT（人机交互中的社会认知，IIT）
A Whole-Body Motion Imitation Framework from Human Data for Full-Size Humanoid Robot
The State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control and Technology of Zhejiang University（浙江大学工业控制技术状态重点实验室）；Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center（浙江人形机器人创新中心）；Department of Engineering Mechanics of Zhejiang University（浙江大学工程力学系）
Learning Human-Humanoid Coordination for Collaborative Object Carrying
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the University of Hong Kong（香港大学电子与电气工程系）；State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, BIGAI（通用人工智能国家重点实验室，BIGAI）；School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学计算机科学与技术学院）；Yuanpei College, Peking University（北京大学元培学院）
