Due to developments in modern society, social robots are rapidly establishing as a new type of user interface that will be applied by governments, businesses, education and healthcare units. A crucial gap that still needs to be filled before social robots are integrated into real-world settings is that they must ultimately be accepted by humans in the human social sphere1. An essential factor playing a role in robot acceptance is the ability of robots to react appropriately to human social signals, which are often expressed in behavior/movement. Therefore, the primary question we deal with in this collaboration is on how movement contains and expresses meaning. A systematization of how different characteristics of movement contribute to meaning would be extremely useful for the development of robots and other socially interactive technologies. Our hypothesis is that such systematization can be approached as a form of a dynamic grammar of movement expressivity, grounded in dance theories and practices and scientific formalizations of movement in robotics and behavioral sciences.
- Dr. Ir. Emilia I. Barakova, assistant professor, ID, TU Eindhoven (TU/e)
- Prof. Panos Markopoulos, full professor, ID, TU Eindhoven (TU/e)
- Dr. Koen V. Hindriks, associatie professor, EEMCS, TU Delft (TUD)
- Dr.ir. Dennis Reidsma, assistant professor, HMI, University of Twente (UT)
- Prof. Maaike Bleeker, DMCS, Utrecht Universitiy (UT)