What do you do if somebody else publishes your thesis as a book? This is what happened to Andrew Vonasch. Together, we investigated this new type of scam. We discovered a flood of stolen theses and the thieves’ method to publish them on Amazon and through other resellers. I interviewed Richard Elliott and sought legal ..read more

This episode is a live recording of the Raising the Bar event that took place on 10 September 2024 in Christchurch, New Zealand. I explore the long-standing promise of robots that would handle household tasks and serve as teachers, caregivers, and companions. Despite advancements in social robots, they remain absent from our daily lives. Figures ..read more

 Robots are not just machines. We treat them as if they were somewhat like humans, including applying moral standards and expectations to them. Our behavior towards robots matters. The way we treat them reveals much about ourselves. In today’s episode, we will talk about how being nice is not the opposite of being cruel to ..read more

Robots and AI are being portrayed in overly optimistic videos, television shows and advertisements. Tesla’s Optimus robot is a prime example. In this episode Dwain Allan and Christoph Bartneck interview John Petrocelli and Nick Lee on how this puffery, bullshit and lies affect consumers and vulnerable people. Such as Suzanne Barron, who believes that robots ..read more

Humanoid robot companies are promising that humanoids will fast become our friends, colleagues, employees, and the backbone of our workforce. As Elon Musk described it when he first unveiled Tesla’s Optimus: “It will upend our idea of what the economy is… it will be able to do basically anything humans don’t want to do… it’s ..read more

A new wave of humanoids entered the scene, and their creators promised us a bright future. Atlas, Figure, and Optimus are intended to work in spaces that are designed for humans. They are not only targeted at factories, but also at our homes and families. But what promises can they actually meet? Dwain Allan and I interviewed Will Jackson and Robert Riener on the future of humanoids. Transcript The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript. ISSN 2703-4054 Important Links: Optimus Digit Figure Atlas Agibot Ra ..read more

Artificial Intelligence promise to improve many aspects of our lives. The current hype, in particular around Large Language Model, raises the questions what of these bold visions of the future is science and what is fiction. AI is not new in HRI. For many decades researchers used it to enable robots to better interact with humans. In this episode I talked with Julie Adams and David Kaber about what AI can really do for HRI. Transcript The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript. ISSN 2703-4054 Important Lin ..read more

The peer review process is essential to modern science. Researchers conduct studies and submit their results to a journal. An editor manages a review process involving external experts. But what happens when you study the peer review process itself? How do scientific organisations react when they become the subject of an experiment? Not well, to say the least. This live recording is from the Nerd Night at the Little Andromeda Theatre in Christchuch, New Zealand. Transcript The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through&nbs ..read more

Should you use chatGPT for podcasting? I asked chatGPT this question and used Descript’s Overdub feature to voice the response. Generating this episode was quicker than any other I ever created. Is it any good? Probably not. Still, it shows how quickly it is possible to generate superficial content. This might be useful for enabling robots to have superficial conversations with people. Just don’t expect any originality or accuracy. Transcript The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript. HRI-Podcast-Episode ..read more

Publishing your human-robot interaction study in a journal is an excellent way to share your insights. But in which journal should you publish and what do the journals expect? In this episode, we talk to editors from the three dedicated HRI journals, Agnieszka Wykowska (International Journal of Social Robotics), Selma Sabanovic (ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction) and Bilge Mutlu (Frontiers in Robotics and AI | Human-Robot Interaction). We talk about Open Access publishing and what the future of scientific publishing might look like. Besides the three dedicated journals, there are als ..read more