CAREER: Designing Socially Adept Robots

机器人承诺在教育、康复和协作等关键领域做出重大社会贡献，但要实现这一承诺，它们必须能够有效地与人沟通。这个项目的目标是通过使用计算工具对人类的语言、声音和非语言行为进行建模，在机器人中再生这些行为，并在讲故事、采访、对话、指导和协作工作等社交场景中评估它们在人-机器人研究中的有效性，从而为机器人设计有效的社会行为。这项研究将遵循跨学科的方法，结合计算和社会科学方法，推动机器人技术的最新发展。智力优势：这项研究将创建一套设计规范，机器人设计师可以使用这些规范来创建能够与人类有效沟通的机器人。这些规范将作为开源机器人操作系统(ROS)的模块公开分发给机器人设计师和研究人员。该项目还将产生新的计算工具，使人类行为建模和合成机器人的有效行为成为可能。此外，这项研究将通过提供对人类社会行为的更详细的、计算的理解，为社会科学做出贡献。更广泛的影响：这项研究将使机器人能够在教育、协作工作以及健康和福祉等关键领域更有效地与人沟通。这些项目还将把计算工具引入尚未从计算机技术进步中获得实质性好处的领域，如自闭症和创伤性脑损伤的诊断和治疗。通过综合教育和推广计划，该项目还将促进跨学科教育、本科和研究生课程、K-12和特殊教育、公众对科学和技术的了解，以及进一步将少数群体和残疾儿童纳入科学研究和教育。

Robots hold the promise of delivering significant social contributions in such key domains as education, rehabilitation, and collaboration, but to achieve this promise they must be able to communicate effectively with people. The goal of this project is to design effective social behaviors for robots by modeling human verbal, vocal, and nonverbal behavior using computational tools, regenerating them in robots, and evaluating their effectiveness in human-robot studies in social scenarios such as storytelling, interview, conversation, instruction, and collaborative work. The research will follow an interdisciplinary approach, combining computational and social-scientific methods toward advancing the state of the art in robotic technology.Intellectual Merit: The research will create a set of design specifications that robot designers can use to create robots that effectively communicate with people. These specifications will be openly disseminated to robot designers and researchers as modules for the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS). The project will also lead to new computational tools that will enable modeling human behavior and synthesizing effective behaviors for robots. In addition, this research will contribute to social science by providing a more detailed, computational understanding of human social behavior. Broader Impacts: The research will enable robots to communicate more effectively with people in such critical domains as education, collaborative work, and health and wellbeing. The projects will also introduce computational tools into areas that have not yet substantially benefited from advancements in computer technology, such as the diagnosis and treatment of autism and traumatic brain injury. Through an integrated education and outreach program, this project will also contribute to interdisciplinary education, undergraduate and graduate curricula, K-12 and special education, public understanding of science and technology, and further inclusion of minorities and children with disabilities in scientific research and education.