NEWS

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) is considered one of the top conferences in the field of human-computer interaction. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the special interest group on computer-human interaction.  At this year’s conference, RIT published the paper “EMI: An Expressive Mobile Interactive Robot”, authored by Yuhui You in collaboration with Mitchell Fogelson, Kelvin Cheng, and Bjorn Stenger.

In the paper,  Yuhui  explores how the expressive behavior of a robot affects interactions with humans, an issue of burgeoning interest given the advent of radical innovations that offer new ways to assist us in various tasks. She introduces EMI, an expressive, mobile, and interactive robot, consisting of a circular differential drive base, equipped with a rear-projected expressive face, and omni-directional microphone for voice-interaction. The EMI robot was exhibited at a public event in which attendees were given the option to interact with the robot and participate in a survey and observational study. The survey and observations focused on the effects of the robot’s expressiveness in interactions with both adults and children. Using the survey responses, video observations, and informal interviews,  Yuhui and collaborators highlighted key design decisions in EMI that resulted in positive user reactions. In so doing, the paper provides insights for future social robots and animated emotion which can help promote human-robot interactions. 

Though CHI was unable to host a physical or virtual conference this year, RIT members were able to share some of their research and hopefully make an impactful contribution to further innovation and research in AI and growing uses of AI technologies in human-facing applications.