Work

We moved our team meeting into the TFDL VR Suite to explore some applications on the HTC Vive. We wound up only having time for Tilt Brush and Slingshot in Valve's VR demo The Lab. We'll definitely be going back to spend some time with a few other applications…

Saw a demo of a new product from Sony that would have been super-handy 2 years ago. It basically combines two of the complicated-and-therefore-fragile bits of tech we use in our Collaboration Carts in the TI. May need to look at a pilot to evaluate…

thinking about a spectrum of physically, triggered thoughts more like a web with interconnections, which turned into a multidimensional space with axes defining aspects of the framework and performance modalities positioned in 3D (or n-D) with interconnections…

I presented my HRI theme study to the iLab meeting. We had a really interesting discussion about intentionality of motion, timing, and the uncanny valley.

HRI theme study presentation

I've been struggling with this, as I'm sure most people are. It hit me last night (again), when I was essentially numb as I tried to tune out the insanity from Trump's speech to Congress.

I try to assume everyone is trying to do the right thing, in their own way, from their own perspective. Even Trump. He's a scared little man, used to entitlement and getting his way. From that perspective, he's just trying to use his awesomeness to save the world from lesser men. Yikes.

Work

We figured out a good solution to provide students with a "terms and conditions" reminder at the beginning of the semester. I wish this kind of thing wasn't necessary, but the only policy documents available are long, dense and unread. We need to provide a clear, useful, brief overview of what students and instructors have agreed to when activating their accounts. Better to do that with an education campaign than with a hammer.

Had a really great lunch discussion with Ehud today, and we went deep on what the overall dissertation research plan could be, and how the HRI course can serve those goals.

Coles Notes version – I’m going all-in on the “record a learning experience in 3D+ and explore playback in various modalities”. I think this is incredibly important. There is a lot of work going on, looking at motion capture and performance. There is a lot of work going on, looking at playback (especially in games and movies), but there is a huge opportunity to explore recording a learning experience (active learning classroom scenario) and allowing participants and observers to revisit in various modalities.

Work

I was in Houston for the EDUCAUSE ELI annual meeting ¹. It was my first time ever attending ELI (or any EDUCAUSE event in person). It’s a really good community, with a nice mix of teaching-types and tech-types.

I presented a poster about our model for communities of practice at the Taylor Institute - I was given a 45 minute poster session, but talked for an hour and a half straight, as people stayed after the session to ask questions. We’re on the right track. Also, lots of similar initiatives happening, with many offering more mature and robust programs (such as the folks at Penn State, the University of Arizona, among others).

Work

The team met with Nancy to talk about what we do, and how that supports the scholarship of teaching and learning mandate of the TI. It turned into a really deep discussion, with lots of good questions.

And, we had a mini retreat with the Learning and Instructional Design group and Learning Technologies Group, to work though how we collaborate and communicate, and to start working on our shared roadmap for the year. Again, lots of deep discussion and great questions. Best. Team(s). Ever.

Work

Met with a bunch of folks in IT to start planning how we will turn UCalgaryBlogs into an Official Serviceâ„¢, with all that entails. It's going to take some time, but it's a good move. Everyone is on board, so now we just need to figure out what that looks like.

Back in HQ, we had a really good team discussion, trying to start figuring out how to shift from emergency/reaction mode to more R&D projects. It's going to take some time, but we've basically been told we need to be the learning technologies innovation hub for the university, and that's going to be a pretty major shift.

Hoffman, G. (2011). On stage: robots as performers. RSS 2011 Workshop on Human-Robot Interaction: ….

Notes:

p.2: relatively constrained, — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017

p.2: humans are sensitive not only to the content, symbols, and categories of interaction tokens, but also to their timing. In human-human joint activities, subjects care about when verbal and non-verbal events occur — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017

p.2: we have shown that not only discrete post-action delays, but also anticipatory action relative to human activity at sub-action resolution causes subjects to evaluate virtual characters and robots as more fluent, morecommitted, and more contributing to the team, when compared to robots that were purely reactive, and thus trailing the subjects’ behavior — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017

Nishiguchi, S., Ogawa, K., Yoshikawa, Y., Chikaraishi, T., Hirata, O., & Ishiguro, H. (2017). Theatrical approach: Designing human-like behaviour in humanoid robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 89, 158–166. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2016.11.017

Notes:

p.158: contemporary colloquial theatre theory (CCTT), which is a method for staging and instructing human actors. Instructions based on CCTT are characteristically and highly focused on reproducing examples of daily human interaction. — Highlighted Feb 4, 2017

p.158: Such precise instructions are expected to be compatible and directly applicable to humanoid robots, and instructing robots in this way has actually been attempted in the robot theatre project. — Highlighted Feb 4, 2017

Knight, H. (2011). Eight Lessons Learned about Non-verbal Interactions through Robot Theater. In Social Robotics (Vol. 7072, pp. 42–51). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25504-5_5

Notes:

p.42: we have identified eight lessons from Robot Theater that inform the design of social robots today. As an interdisciplinary field, we include examples spanning robotics researchers, acting theorists, cognitive neuroscientists, behavioral psychologists and dramaturgy literature. Lessons learned include (1) the importance of intentionality in action; (2)(3)(4) the relationship between embodiment, gesture, and emotional expression; (5) the bipolar sociability categorization between machine and agent; (6) the power of interaction partners to shape robot attributions; (7) the role of audience acknowledgement and feedback; (8) the power of humor to enhance interaction — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017