Human Robot Interaction

The third conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2008) was held in beautifully located Felix Meritis of Amsterdam March 12^th – 15^th. Mattias and Ylva attended a workshop on Coding Behavioral Video Data led by Professor Peter H. Kahn, Jr. from University of Washington. During the workshop the FAL-duo presented some of the gathered video from preliminary user studies with GlowBots and discussed different possibilities for coding such intricate data. The conference itself was also relatively senior dense, and with a much larger attendance rate than expected it was a given success.

First out on the video session was GlowBots – A Love Story, receiving a fair amount of applauds. In summary, the conference felt to be more tilted towards human and robot rather than interaction – leaving a lot of space open for us to explore.

Designing Interactive Systems

Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) took place in South Africa on February 25-27. Maria Håkansson and Lalya Gaye presented a full paper, Bringing Context to the Foreground: Designing for Creative Engagement in a Novel Still Camera Application, about the Context Photography project.


The closing keynote was given by Professor Bill Gaver of Goldsmith College, who soon will be coming to Sweden to act as opponent for Sara Ljungblad's Ph.D. thesis.


And of course, there were some opportunities for more relaxing activities, like a very small safari...

Tangible and Embedded Interaction

FAL-member Ylva Fernaeus went to present a theoretical full paper at the TEI'08 conference in Bonn, and also got selected to participate in the closing panel. The topics to be discussed in the panel were the "where, when, why and what of tangible interfaces", which resulted in quite some interesting (and amusing!) discussions. Below is a picture from the panel:

A general theme at the conference seemed to be how tangibles are moving from research prototypes with focus on "the interface", towards real applications and products, and how these are actually taken into use.

Ubiquitous Content in Tokyo

Keio University recently organized a symposium to spread information about the Ubiquitous Content project and the XTEL platform, a hardware/software solution for rapid prototyping of physical interaction. FAL leader Lars Erik Holmquist was guest speaker at the symposium, along with robot researcher Yoshiyuki Sankai, who is a pioneer in the field of Cybernics and developer of a human robot suit.

Lars Erik also attended an exhibition with student project created using the XTEL platform, as well as other interesting examples of hardware/software interaction. It was fun to meet the talented Keio students and researchers and see some of their work! We hope to be using the XTEL platform in the Mobile Life Center and look forward to more collaboration with Keio, in particular the new Media Design Graduate School.

Here we see Ishizawa Takaaki, one of the XTEL system designers, proudly displaying boxes of the hardware board, along with students showing installations built using the platform. This included a soft toy to control an on-line avatar; a system for sharing images between friends and family; and finally Michihiko Ueno's shape-changing textiles.





Not everything was built using XTEL - there were many other interesting projects from Inakage Lab, Okude Lab. and Wakita Lab. Below we see Midori Shibutani with the Fabcell project, a color-changing dress based on thermo-chromatic textiles, and Yu Uchida with the interactive shadow installation Kage no Sekai.

Glowbots at home

We are currently conducting a long term user study of the GlowBots in a home environment.

The GlowBots are just starting to settle in the friendly family who has been taking care of them for the last month. The robots seemed a little shy in the beginning but now they have started to display a lot of unexpected talents:

An important observation is that since the robots don't seem to like daylight the children tend to switch off the light as soon as it is time to play - which of course means that their father has to do the cooking in the dark! Technology that really make a difference...

Internship at Ugobe

Next week Mattias Jacobsson will travel to Boise, Idaho to do an internship at Ugobe Labs. The people at Ugobe have created an innovative atmosphere, developing technology that take robotics to the next level, where sustained interaction with artificial creatures would actually be realized for the first time. Their first product - Pleo, was just hatched before Christmas, and has very reasonable price-tag.
Mattias will work on making robotics more appealing from a community perspective by working close with their researchers and look at issues concerning sustainable interaction. He will also explore the middle ground between entertainment robotics and mobile technology.
The internship is sponsored by a personal mobility grant from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research.

New member of FAL

Ylva Ferneaus has just started working at the Future Applications Lab! She received her Ph.D. degree from the department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University in March 2007. The title of her thesis was Let’s make a digital patchwork, and it explored social, bodily and cultural forms of computer programming. At FAL, she will work in the European projects ECAgents - Embodied Communicating Agents and LIREC - Living with Interactive Companions, where she will explore novel robot technologies, with special focus on qualities that people are attracted by, and how these could be further addressed in research.