Christiana Tsiourti finished her PhD

Christiana Tsiourti came as a visiting PhD researcher for her last year to the V4R group. I was her host supervisor together with Markus Vincze. She did two exciting HRI studies during her stay, one is published at HAI2017 conference and one will soon be published in the Social Robotics Journal. Her PhD thesis is now available online: https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:110600

Now Christiana even took over my “Basics in HRI course” while I am on maternity leave with my second child and I just saw students’ final presentations yesterday….really impressive.

So Christiana keep up with the great work and all the best for your future academic career!

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Informal EMCO: Invited Talk

Last week, I gave an invited talk on “The Future of HRI in the care sector” at the 2018 Informal EMCO meeting. The Employment Committee of the European Commission (EMCO) is an advisory committee set up to implement the European Employment Strategy and to promote coordination between Member States on employment and labour market policies.  This year’s topic was Digitalization. Besides another talk of care robotics given by Haus der Barmherzigkeit, a tremendously informative talk was given by Sociology professor Jörg flecker (University Vienna).

PubRob 2018: Invited Talk

This week, I gave my first invited talk with my newborn son (almost 3 months) carried in the baby sling via Skype 🙂 So happy that modern technology makes it possible to contribute to academia while on parental leave.

It was an invited talk on my research on robots in public space at the PubRob 2018 workshop, which was held in conjunction with MobileHCI this year. The presented work was mainly from the EU-project IURO (during my University of Salzburg time). You can find the slides on the workshop website.

This workshop was the fifth in a series of meetings (and the fourth workshop) organised around the theme of public space human-robot interaction. Details of previous events can be found on the PubRob website.

 

My ÖAW portrait is online

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/detail/news/relationships-with-robots/

unfortunately only in German

Best paper award :)

Some great news: Our first publication within the SharedSpace project won the best paper ward at “Social Robots. A Workshop on the Past, the Present and the Future of Digital Companions” which took place in conjunction with  PETRA 2018, the 11th ACM Conference on Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments.

My colleague and future PhD student Glenda Hannibal (she will be part of the TrustRobot PhD College) presented our work. In our paper entitled: “What makes people accept or reject companion robots: A research agenda”, we outlined our theoretical basis and methodological strategy for the SharedSpace project.

Interview on the impact of digitalisation on social services

Today I was interviewed as an expert in the field of assistive robotics for a European-wide study on the impact of digitalisation on social services (conducted by Eurofund in cooperation of VVA and TNO).

I was asked in a structured interview for my views about digitalisation in social services in Austria with respect to robots in elderly care. Besides giving an overview on the state of the art of relevant robotic developments in this area, I above all tried to stress the relevance of user-centered development involving several stakeholders, not only primary user, but also secondary users and institutions such as insurances.

I will update this post as soon as the project report is available.

Elected member of the Young Academy

I am very honored to be one  of the 29 new members the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) welcomes  to its ranks. At the annual election on 20 April 2018, 16 female and 13 male researchers were “inducted in recognition of their scholarly achievements and their reputation within their respective fields”.

The Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) is Austria’s central non-university research and science institution. Its statutory mission is to “promote science in every way”.

My personal agenda for my 8 years election period is (1) promoting interdisciplinary research, (2) mentoring women in science, and (3) strengthening the “akademischen Mittelbau” (a specific administrative structure in the Austrian University System).x