Curious Non-verbal Communication for Humanoid Robots

Curiosity is a fundamental human emotion that motivates us to explore and learn about the world around us. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the development of robots that can express curiosity. We envision that in the future, robots will help us with our daily chores and tasks. For this, robots should 1. want and be able to learn from humans, 2. communicate their intent to learn from humans, and 3. refer to related abstract contents or concrete objects. We envision that by expressing curiosity, interaction with such robots will be more engaging and rewarding for humans.

You will:

• Perform a literature review on how to express curiosity
• Design non-verbal gestures expressing curiosity for a humanoid robot
• Conduct a user study exploring the effect of these gestures in simulation environments, such as Rviz, fully VR or AR which combined physical robot arm/head and holographic [1].
• Summarize your findings in a thesis and presenting them to an audience
• (Optional) Co-writing a research paper

You need:

• Strong communication skills in english
• Strong programming skills (Python)
• (Optional but strongly recommended) Prior experience with ROS and Robots
• Motivated and interested in (movement/motion) design

References

• [1]Explainable Human-Robot Training and Cooperation with Augmented Reality.