Department of Psychology

With our contribution to the project “Cognitive Service Robotics Apartment as Ambient Host“ (CSRA)” we participated in the interdisciplinary development of an intelligent apartment and his interconnectedness with a service robot. The apartment as well as the robot should support the inhabitants in their everyday life and enable them to stay as long as possible in their home. The selected robot is Meka M1 Mobile Manipulator, who will be equipped with the Flobi-head, which was developed at CITEC.

In close collaboration to further eleven research groups of CITEC, we develop surveys, which record expectations and requirements of the users. Furthermore we create experimental surveys to test the human interaction with the apartment. At the same time we work theory-based and multimethodic to be able to advance the apartment user-centered and to check the practicability of the developed functions in the next step. Using psychological principles we analyzed different designs for the robot head to decide for the best one to be implemented. The goal is to consequently improve the human-robot interaction and the intelligent environment-human interaction.

Link to the project-webpage: https://cit-ec.de/de/cognitive-service-robotics-apartment-ambient-host-0

The objective of the joint exchange project is to investigate aspects of human cognitive development with the double goal of developing robots able to interact with humans in a friendly way and of designing and testing protocols and devices for sensory and motor rehabilitation of disabled children. The methodology we intend to follow will combine science driven investigation of human cognitive development and engineering based implementation of devices and protocols. The intended focus is on social interaction and how the knowledge of this aspect of development could lead to robots able to communicate with humans in a natural and “biological way” (friendly robots), and/or give rise to training and rehabilitation techniques for children with sensory, motor and cognitive disabilities.

Link to the project-webpage: https://www.codefror.eu/

Regional cluster of innovations in “Human-technology interaction in demographic change” of the BMBF

In the KogniHome-project, we do research on ethical and social questions, which are connected to the development and use of intelligent building technologies at home. We explore how interconnected technology can facilitate everyday life in multifaceted ways, how it can enrich the individual experience, and how it can improve health and safety. The objective of this project is to create better conditions for a long and self-determined life. Several assistive technical systems in the home context will be built as demonstrators, will be connected with each other and will be able to interact with the inhabitants in an individual way. The users’ needs are here in the focus.

In cooperation with the v. Bodelschwinghschen Stiftungen Bethel, our research group is responsible for the work on ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Implications). In our research, we address these aspects in surveys and experiments on acceptance and usability. The aim is to continuously calibrate technical developments to these empirical insights.

In addition to this cross-sectional task, we lead the evaluation of the situated human-machine dialogue, which will be realized by a virtual dialogue assistant.  

Link to the project webpage: www.kognihome.de

Technical assistance systems and intelligent agents are used in more and more areas of life and interact in various ways with us humans. Examples for that are no longer just robots in the industrial context: Smart Home technology, personal assistants capable of learning (e.g., on the smartphone), and social robots, for example in nursing care, are on the brink of becoming an everyday phenomenon. In interactions with humans, however, these technologies solely follow their own process logic – human cultural techniques to manage socially shared contexts, such as norms or social conventions of polite behavior were hardly considered for advanced human-machine-interaction. The research project poliTE: Social appropriateness for artificial assistants starts from there and investigates the dimensions of social adequacy in human-human interaction, and their possible implementation in artificial assistants to foster socially adequate human-machine-interaction. PoliTE supports the concrete development of socially adequately behaving assistant systems with workshops and with the publication of a manual on the subject.

Website: http://polite.fokos.de/#

Project partners: Forschungskolleg „Zukunft menschlich gestalten” (FoKoS), Siegen University; Center for Cognitive Interactive Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld University

Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Reference: 16SV7880K)

Projektstart: 01.09.2018

Projektlaufzeit: 3 Jahre

Projektträger: BMBF (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung)

Das Ziel des Projekts VIVA ist die Entwicklung eines vertrauenswürdigen, lebendigen sozialen Roboters, der von Nutzer*innen im privaten Umfeld als attraktive Bereicherung empfunden wird. VIVA soll das persönliche psychische Wohlbefinden der Nutzer*innen verbessern und sie bei der Pflege von Sozialkontakten unterstützen.