Social Human-Robot Interaction

We will work with the Choregraphe program.

Choregraphe is already installed in our Docker image. Check Docker tutorial for more details.

This task should teach you:

• Control a “user-friendly” humanoid robot
• Design a human-friendly social interaction application

Choregraphe tutorial

Tasks in tutorial:

• Have Choregraphe 2.5 installed
• We introduce the functions

We will see a demonstration of our “CTU Demo” with Pepper.

Task 1 With a connected virtual robot:

• Study the Pepper autonomous life behavior (you can see them also in the simulation but also make notes when you see the robot live).
• Identify atomic actions Pepper does during idle movement and also from the Pepper available actions in Choregraphe. Study the following (advice, not in autonomous life regime) and notice the subtle movements:
  • GoToStance_Question movements
  • LittleBowAndSpreadArms
  • FancyRightArmCircle
• You can have a look at the Pepper programming guide PDF for style guidance and official documentation for programming tips

Task 2

• Create your own timeline supporting a dialogue for the robot:
  • Create a movement timeline for the robot while it is asking a person a question.
  • Implement the movement and also the accompanying dialogue.
  • Experiment with the example dialog available in Choregraphe (especially notice commands like ^start(animations/Stand/Gestures/Hey_1) or ^gotoReactivate(howAreYou)).
  • Explain what makes the created behaviors human-like or what diminishes their human-likeness.
  • Submit the Choreographe project and your explanation (as a PDF).

Best movements from the exercise will be demonstrated in class on the live robot the following week.

Discussion:

• Uncanny valley - what is it and how does it work?
• Discuss what behavior and features of Pepper make it look human-like.

What to expect on the exam