Period: 3.2019 – 2.2022

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Prof. Jan Peters, Ph. D. | FB 20, Intelligente Autonome Systeme

Prof. Dr. Ruth Stock-Homburg | M.Sc. Vgnesh Prasat Doktorand | FB 1, Marketing und Personalmanagement

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Project description:

Anthropomorphic social robots have already become commonplace in many service industries. Their automated social presence helps build an emotional bond during human-robot interaction. In this context, physical contact plays an important role, as touch can convey complex emotions. Handshaking is one such important physically interactive behaviour that can influence the course of a human-robot interaction. Therefore, the ability of an anthropomorphic robot to perform an authentic, human-like handshake can increase its acceptance by users. The aim of the research project “Handshake Turing Test” is to train a robot in such a way that it can imitate humanlike handshaking and thus pass a Handshaking Turing Test. Handshaking is developed as a physical, haptic interaction using advances in machine learning and robotics so that it conveys an authentic, human-like interaction. This is done by first studying human handshaking behaviours to understand how different modalities contribute to the interaction and what aspects affect its perception. Following this, it is investigated how these results from human handshakes be realised as robotic behaviours in a way that captures the interactiveness of handshaking. The expected end results would contribute significantly to the acceptance of physical, haptic humanrobot interactions. Furthermore, this can pave the way for learning similar physically interactive behaviours that equip social robots with a repertoire of social skills required for effective human-robot interaction.

Peer-Review-Publications

Stock-Homburg, R., Peters, J., Schneider, K., Prasad, V. and Nukovic, L., 2020. Evaluation of the Handshake Turing Test for anthropomorphic Robots. In Companion of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

Prasad, V., Stock-Homburg, R. and Peters, J., 2020. Advances in Human-Robot Handshaking. In International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR). Springer.

Prasad, V., Stock-Homburg, R. and Peters, J., 2021, Human-Robot Handshaking: A Review. in International Journal of Social Robotics, Springer.

Prasad, V., Stock-Homburg, R. and Peters, J., 2021, Learning Human-like Hand Reaching for Human-Robot Handshaking. In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).