May 26th, 2022, 2:00–3:15pm
Instructor: Ilaria Torre, Postdoctoral Researcher
Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Abstract of Seminar
Social robots are becoming more ubiquitous in our daily lives. They are being used to assist the elderly in their homes, as fitness coaches, and as children's learning aids, among many other uses. They have great potential to improve our lives, but their deployment in society presents several challenges. For example, even though many of these applications require spoken verbal interaction, not much research has been dedicated to study how the robots’ voices should actually sound like. However, humans form first impressions of newly met speakers very quickly based on their voice; characteristics such as accent, gender, or voice pitch influence how we perceive and judge these new speakers. The same happens with robot speakers, so their voices should be carefully designed to create appropriate expectations for these robots. In this talk, I will introduce the field of social robotics and present some of the work I have done towards creating appropriate and trustworthy communication strategies for robots.
Instructor’s Bio
Ilaria Torre is a postdoctoral researcher in the Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning at KTH, Stockholm. She works in the field of human-robot interaction, trying to design robots that work appropriately in interaction with humans, and to study how people behave in interaction with robots. She leverages expertise in linguistics and psychology to improve (verbal and nonverbal) communication between humans and robots. Some recent projects include designing appropriate voices for different-looking robots, using nonverbal sounds to communicate robots' actions and intentions for navigating through a crowded space, and studying which voice characteristics increase trust towards robots and other artificial agents. Prior to joining KTH, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Trinity College Dublin, School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and she obtained a PhD in human-computer interaction from the University of Plymouth in 2017.
