A Distributed Architecture for Interacting with NAO
Demonstrations
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Badeig, Fabien
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Pelorson, Quentin
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Arias, Soraya
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Drouard, Vincent
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Gebru, Israel
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Li, Xiaofei
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Evangelidis, Georgios
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Horaud, Radu
Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
2015-11-09
p.385-386
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: One of the main applications of the humanoid robot NAO -- a small robot
companion -- is human-robot interaction (HRI). NAO is particularly well suited
for HRI applications because of its design, hardware specifications,
programming capabilities, and affordable cost. Indeed, NAO can stand up, walk,
wander, dance, play soccer, sit down, recognize and grasp simple objects,
detect and identify people, localize sounds, understand some spoken words,
engage itself in simple and goal-directed dialogs, and synthesize speech. This
is made possible due to the robot's 24 degree-of-freedom articulated structure
(body, legs, feet, arms, hands, head, etc.), motors, cameras, microphones,
etc., as well as to its on-board computing hardware and embedded software,
e.g., robot motion control. Nevertheless, the current NAO configuration has two
drawbacks that restrict the complexity of interactive behaviors that could
potentially be implemented. Firstly, the on-board computing resources are
inherently limited, which implies that it is difficult to implement
sophisticated computer vision and audio signal analysis algorithms required by
advanced interactive tasks. Secondly, programming new robot functionalities
currently implies the development of embedded software, which is a difficult
task in its own right necessitating specialized knowledge. The vast majority of
HRI practitioners may not have this kind of expertise and hence they cannot
easily and quickly implement their ideas, carry out thorough experimental
validations, and design proof-of-concept demonstrators. We have developed a
distributed software architecture that attempts to overcome these two
limitations. Broadly speaking, NAO's on-board computing resources are augmented
with external computing resources. The latter is a computer platform with its
CPUs, GPUs, memory, operating system, libraries, software packages, internet
access, etc. This configuration enables easy and fast development in Matlab, C,
C++, or Python. Moreover, it allows the user to combine on-board libraries
(motion control, face detection, etc.) with external toolboxes, e.g., OpenCv.
Supporting Collaborative Work in Socio-Physical Environments: A Normative
Approach
Working at Distance
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Garbay, Catherine
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Badeig, Fabien
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Caelen, Jean
Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on the Design of
Cooperative Systems
2012-05-30
p.213-228
Keywords: Collaboration architectures; Tangible Distributed Interfaces; Activity
Theory; Normative Multi-Agent Systems
© Copyright 2012 Springer-Verlag London
Summary: We propose a normative approach to collaborative support system design in
distributed tangible environments. Based on activity theory, our goal is to
mediate rather than drive human activity and to integrate components from the
physical, numerical and social environments. We propose an original
architecture coupling a physical space (tools supporting human activity), a
processing space (agent performing activity, be it human or artificial), an
informational space (traces reflecting activity), and a normative space
(filters regulating activity). We further consider collaboration as a
conversational process grounded in the objects of the working space. To this
end, tangible objects of various kinds are designed to support multi-threaded
activity. Heterogeneous trace properties may then be fused to situate activity
and ground the filtering process. Interface agents are designed to provide
appropriate visual feedback and support mutual awareness. Beyond the mere
sharing of individual or group activity, we approach awareness as involving
mutual knowledge of the activity constraints. We show through simple examples
from the RISK game the potential richness of the proposed approach.
Normative multi-agent approach to support collaborative work in distributed
tangible environments
Interactive poster
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Garbay, Catherine
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Badeig, Fabien
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Caelen, Jean
Companion Proceedings of ACM CSCW'12 Conference on Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work
2012-02-11
v.2
p.83-86
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: We propose a design for collaborative support system in distant tangible
environments, in the framework of activity theory. We model collaboration as
driven by individual-centered and group-centered rules. Context sharing is core
to this process, but reveals difficult in the case of distant tangible
communication. We propose to model collaboration as a trace-based process in
which tangible object traces are stored, analyzed, enriched and shared. We draw
on a normative multi-agent approach in which explicit norms are meant to
operate at various levels, from the physical to the social level. These norms
do not act as a prerequisite, or as a way to place a priori constraints on
action. Rather, they result in a set of signs situating the activity. Such
design offers novel ways for embedding activity theory in the current trend of
socio-physical computing.
