Research

The research group “Socially Assistive Robotics with Artificial Intelligence” (Prof. Dr. Barbara Bruno) designs, develops and evaluates social robots aiming at assisting children, people suffering from impairments or disorders and older adults in fundamental tasks such as cognitive development/training, skills acquisition, self-regulation and self-awareness. Central to the group's approach is the combination of robot-oriented research with human-oriented research. From a robot perspective, the research focus is on developing the user modelling, planning and interaction capabilities required by the robot to carry on the assistive task autonomously and successfully. From a human perspective, the research focus is on identifying and modelling the factors that affect a person's perception of, and interaction with, a robot, and thus impact the robot's effectiveness. Finally, key to the evaluation of the robot and its effectiveness is the design of often long-term user studies, which implies the identification and design of appropriate research methodologies and evaluation tools.

Publications


  1. A Socially Mediating Robot to Assist Non-verbal Children in an Inclusive Daycare Context
    Rixen, J. O.; Abdalla, R.; Kuch, V. C.; Scherer, N.; Bruno, B.; Gerling, K.
    2025. doi:10.5445/IR/1000178148
  2. Augmenting Automatic Speech Recognition Models With Disfluency Detection
    Amann, R.; Li, Z.; Bruno, B.; Niehues, J.
    2024. 2024 IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop (SLT), 224–231, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). doi:10.1109/SLT61566.2024.10832349
  3. Trust “in the field”: reflections on a real-world lab deploying social robots in childcare settings
    Weinberger, N.; Gerling, K.; Rixen, J. O.; Bruno, B.
    2024. Proceedings of the SCRITA 2024 Workshop on Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction at IEEE RO-MAN 2024, 26th-30th August 2024, Pasadena, Ca., CEUR-WS.org
  4. The Child Factor in Child–Robot Interaction: Discovering the Impact of Developmental Stage and Individual Characteristics
    Rudenko, I.; Rudenko, A.; Lilienthal, A. J.; Arras, K. O.; Bruno, B.
    2024. International Journal of Social Robotics, 16 (8), 1879–1900. doi:10.1007/s12369-024-01121-5
  5. Co-designing a Child-Robot Relational Norm Intervention to Regulate Children’s Handwriting Posture
    Wang, C.; Tozadore, D. C.; Bruno, B.; Dillenbourg, P.
    2024. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference, 934 – 939, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). doi:10.1145/3628516.3659421
  6. Drawings for Insight on Preschoolers’ Perception of Robots
    Rudenko, I.; Norman, U.; Maure, R.; Rudenko, A.; Weinberger, N.; Krebs, F.; Peller-Konrad, F.; Reister, F.; Asfour, T.; Bruno, B.
    2024. Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 920–924, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). doi:10.1145/3610978.3640608
  7. Social robots as skilled ignorant peers for supporting learning
    Nasir, J.; Bruno, B.; Dillenbourg, P.
    2024. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 11, Art.-Nr.: 1385780. doi:10.3389/frobt.2024.1385780
  8. Different Models of Knowledge -Insights from Real-World Labs on Robotic Artificial Intelligence
    Soedibjo, K.; Lefint, J.; Norman, U.; Vetter, P.; Maia, M. J.; Bruno, B.; Nierling, L.; Weinberger, N.
    2024. International Conference Knowledge Transfer in and through Living Labs (2024), Aachen, Germany, June 24–26, 2024
  9. Co-designing a Child-Robot Relational Norm Intervention to Regulate Children’s Handwriting Posture
    Wang, C.; Tozadore, D. C.; Bruno, B.; Dillenbourg, P.
    2024. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2406.07721
  10. WriteUpRight: Regulating Children’s Handwriting Body Posture by Unobstrusively Error Amplification via Slow Visual Stimuli on Tablets
    Wang, C.; Tozadore, D. C.; Bruno, B.; Dillenbourg, P.
    2024. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 24), Article no: 573, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). doi:10.1145/3613904.3642457
  11. Participatory design of a social robot and robot-mediated storytelling activity to raise awareness of gender inequality among children
    Maure, R.; Bruno, B.
    2023. 2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Busan, 28th-31st August 2023, 974–981, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). doi:10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309391
  12. The iReCheck project: using tablets and robots for personalised handwriting practice
    Tozadore, D. C.; Gauthier, S.; Bruno, B.; Wang, C.; Zou, J.; Aubin, L.; Archambault, D.; Chetouani, M.; Dillenbourg, P.; Cohen, D.; Anzalone, S. M.
    2023. ICMI ’23 Companion: Companion Publication of the 25th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 297 – 301, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). doi:10.1145/3610661.3616178
  13. Multimodal, Interactive Interfaces for Education
    Tozadore, D. C.; Aubin, L.; Gauthier, S.; Bruno, B.; Anzalone, S. M.
    2023. ICMI ’23: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 826 – 827, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). doi:10.1145/3577190.3616881
  14. An HMM-based Real-time Intervention Methodology for a Social Robot Supporting Learning
    Nasir, J.; Abderrahim, M.; Bruno, B.; Dillenbourg, P.
    2023. 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2023), 2204–2211, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). doi:10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309430