Horia Maior – new paper

Telepresence Robots for Remote Participation in Higher
Education

Junrui Hu, Gisela Reyes-Cruz, Horia Alexandru Maior, Joel Fischer

Telepresence robotics enable people to synchronously communicate
and interact at a distance. The Covid-19 pandemic caused in-person
teaching and research activities to migrate online in almost all
society sectors (including higher education). In hybrid learning
environments, telepresence robots have the potential to increase
the effectiveness of distance learning by enhancing user presence,
allowing students to remain physically embodied and socially connected. However, to be accepted, trusted, and adopted in higher
education, more work is needed to investigate the specific requirements of telepresence robotics in these settings. In this paper, we
present the results of a mixed methods study exploring how the
use of a telepresence robot in a simulated learning and research
environment affects trust in and user experience of telepresence
robots used in higher education. We aimed to understand users’
attitudes and requirements for the use of telepresence robots in academic teaching and research. Our findings suggest that the level of
trust is contingent upon the user, the performance of the robot, and
the credibility of the developing organisation. We additionally map
out the current challenges encountered by the use of telepresence
robots in these settings and provide suggestions to improve user
experience by highlighting new software and hardware capabilities.

Access the paper here.

Neelima Sailaja – new paper

User-Centred Repair: From Current Practices to Future Design

Damla, Kilic & Neelima Sailaja:

From the kitchen to the bathroom, homes are now equipped with various technological devices like smart vacuums, intelligent mirrors, digital thermostats, wearables, and voice-controlled assistants such as Amazon Alexa. This surge in ubiquitous technologies contributes to the growing concern of electronic waste, or e-waste, globally. Research focuses on developing strategies for e-waste reduction, and is considering a range of approaches on governmental, industrial and societal levels. To gain a comprehensive understanding of smart device repair, our research was structured into several distinct tasks, each supported by semi-structured interviews, each tailored to explore different facets of repair behaviours and decision-making. A total of fifteen one-on-one study sessions were conducted as part of this research. The study’s findings will be presented in three primary sections, each shedding light on distinct aspects of repair practices and decision-making. Along with the aforementioned results around current repair practices, repair decision making drivers and future expectations, our paper offers two significant contributions to human-computer interaction (HCI) research and practice. First, we place our findings in a broader context, anchoring them within the existing body of literature on HCI, repair practices, and the IoT. Second, we leverage our findings along with wider literature to conclude our paper with a set of design recommendations that align with current actual user practice around IoT repair; is inclusive of user expectations around every day reparability in future IoT; and enables user decision making around IoT repair thereby making IoT reparability an accessible and equitable process.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) Volume 14718 LNCS, Pages 52 – 712024 12th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2024, held as part of the 26th HCI International Conference, HCII 2024Washington29 June 2024through 4 July 2024: DOI10.1007/978-3-031-59988-0_4

 

Horia to join Max Wilson at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

Horizon Transitional Assistant Professor, Horia Maior will be joining Dr Max Wilson, Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London (2-7 July) to demonstrate different types of wearable brain scanning devices.  The ‘Brain Team’ will be gathering people’s opinions on how they feel about using consumer neurotechnology.  More information about this event can be found in this University of Nottingham Press Release.

 

Upcoming TAS Hub – Living with AI Podcast

Horizon TAP Horia Maior talks about his research and involvement in the Open All Senses project and the TAS Art project in a TAS Hub Podcast session entitled ‘Living with AI: Telepresence the Human in the Robot’, release date 5th July

Also participating in the podcast, Praminda Caleb-Solly discusses the Digital Twins for Human-Assistive Robot Teams project  and Ayse Kucukyilmaz the Cognitive HumAn in the looP TEleopeRations (CHAPTER) project.