Carnegie Mellon University

The multidisciplinary research team proposes to use Quori to enable four research thrusts centered around social behavior and communication: 

1. nonverbal communication for social navigation,

2. teachable social robot peers for math education,

3. inter-robot social interaction for heterogenous service robots, and

4. interaction design for agent embodiment in multi-agent systems.

Across the proposed project, the research team will explore different configurations of humans (individual children, individual adults, and groups of adults), robots (one robot, multiple robots, or systems comprised of robots and other devices), and contexts (public and private spaces). The unique capabilities of Quori that will be leveraged are its mobility and multimodal expressiveness. In addition to the core research thrusts, the project also has the potential to deliver a shared code base and general feedback about Quori.

Johns Hopkins University; Johns Hopkins Hospital

The research team proposes to use Quori to enable the following research thrusts:

1. affective interaction to promote meaningful social engagement,

2. mobility coaching to foster physical activity, and

3. field deployment to study naturalistic and long-term effects.

The expected outcomes include new datasets, models, and empirical evidence for social engagement, navigation, and real-world deployments of social robots. The proposed technical developments are compelling, and the application domain (older adults) is an important area of investigation and are expected to be impactful.

Oregan State University

The research team proposes to use Quori to enable the following research thrusts:

1. an investigation of the use of robotics and automation in the treatment of highly-infectious diseases, like Ebola;

2. an investigation, strongly rooted in the social psychology literature, of how people form opinions about robots and their abilities as the robots perform different tasks;

3. a study of the long-term privacy concerns raised by socially interactive robots, and the risk of the eroding of these concerns over time; and

4. integrating Quori into their existing robust NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and into collaborations between the Robotics and Psychology programs at the research site.

The research site is the primary host of ROS and the research team shows great potential to continue to offer software and support to the ever-growing ROS community. The proposed applications domains are compelling, in particular, the aiding treatment of highly-infectious diseases and with regard to privacy. The proposal provides fantastic opportunities for integrating Quori into the university classroom and for use by students in REU and summer school programs.

Saint Louis University; Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

The research team proposes to use Quori to enable the following research thrusts:

1. guidelines for manipulator (arm/hand) design and modularity,

2. rendering human facial expressions on Quori, and

3. mapping facial expressions and arm motions together for personality embodiment on HRI platforms.

To evaluate these capabilities with human users, the research team proposes integrating Quori and the proposed technologies as an extension of an already planned user study, the original with 180 participants and the Quori extension with 25-30 college-aged participants. The design, implementation, and evaluation of one or many alternative robotic arms for Quori, as well as the software for retargeting tracked human arm movements to these robotic arms, could be of great benefit to the Quori community and general HRI community.

University of California, San Diego

This project will further technical and experimental human robot interaction (HRI) research in real-world contexts using the Quori robot. The proposed research will advance fundamental robotics technology with regards to human-centered motion planning, machine learning, and systems engineering, as well as investigate the social and neuroscientific aspects of deploying robots in longitudinally within home and health contexts. The proposed research addresses on-board sensing/computation and unsupervised learning for autonomous social robots. The integration of the proposed hardware and software technologies would expand Quori’s capabilities, which could be quite valuable if shared with the Quori community and general HRI community. The application domains, including community health and dementia care, are compelling, and have the potential for high-impact outcomes.

University of Nevada, Reno

The research team proposes to use Quori to enable the following research thrusts:

1. socially-aware navigation,

2. empirical study of Human-Robot Interaction involving movement and mid-torso actuation, and

3. collaborative interaction in home, office, hospital, and education environments.

The research team proposes empirical studies to evaluate intent through body language, morphological aspects of robot design, and relationships between navigation behavior and perceived social intelligence.

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania’s Modlab was part of the collaborative research team that led the development of Quori under NSF grant CNS-1513275 and -1513108. Modlab is interested in Human Robot Interaction and how low-cost solutions can help lower barriers for robots being used in the real world.

University of Southern California

The USC Interaction Lab research team plans to use Quori to facilitate the following research directions within socially assistive robotics (SAR):

1. Multi-modal interaction modeling and understanding;

2. Embodied communication for expressive interaction;

3. Shaping social dynamics such as trust, empathy, and motivation; and

4. Learning user models for long-term interaction (multiple months+).

As part of the collaborative research team that led to the development of Quori (under NSF grant CNS-1513275 and -151310), the Interaction Lab will focus on bringing Quori into the real world by developing computational models for interacting helpfully with a variety of populations, from older adults in assisted living contexts to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. This work will advance HRI and SAR, test and expand Quori’s interaction and intervention capabilities, and benefit Quori’s community and the larger HRI community by yielding best practices for using Quori with real-world populations in challenging interaction contexts.

University of Washington

The University of Washington research team plans to integrate Quori through a range of timely explorations of studying the potential of a social robot as a therapeutic, stress-reducing, agents in the wild.  Quori adds unique characteristics and functionality such as arm and waist movement, a projected face, and significant height, allowing for a greater range of studies to support our use case.

The proposed studies include:

1. three foundational studies of adolescent-robot interaction

2. an experimental study comparing data gathering, empathetic interactions, and a stress intervention and

3. a longitudinal, ethnographic study comparing multiple robots deployed in the wild.

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The research team will use Quori to enable the following research thrusts:

1. integrating formal methods into human-robot interaction design,

2. enabling emotionally sophisticated human-robot interactions, and

3. development of a comprehensive software stack for HRI.

These research thrusts will establish fundamental building blocks for the design and development of autonomous social robots. The development and integration of the proposed software technologies would expand Quori’s capabilities, which will benefit the Quori community and more broadly the HRI community.