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AdMoVeo: A Robotic Platform for Teaching Creative Programming to Designers

Sjriek Alers and Jun Hu

Abstract. Designing intelligent products, systems and related services require the designers to be able to integrate technology in their designs. Among other skills, programming is the key for the designers to prototype and experiment with the intelligent behaviors. However most of the design students do not have inherent affinity towards programming and electronics. The AdMoVeo robotic platform is designed, purely for the purpose of teaching the industrial design students basic skills of programming. Moreover we aim at a platform that motivates and encourages the design students to explore their creativity with their passions in graphical and behavioral design. This paper presents the hardware and software design of the platform, and shares the experiences in using it in a programming course.

Keywords:creative programming, industrial design, robotic platform

S. Alers, and J. Hu, “AdMoVeo: A Robotic Platform for Teaching Creative Programming to Designers,” Learning by Playing. Game-based Education System Design and Development, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series, 5670/2009, M. Chang, R. Kuo, Kinshuk et al., eds., pp. 410-421, Banff, Canada: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2009.
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-03364-3_49
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Beyond L$: Values across the Virtual and the Real

Jun Hu, Serge Offermans

Abstract Virtual societies and virtual worlds are now patriotically a part of lives of many people, especially the younger generations who have been growing up with the internet and mobile networks. Negative influences such as internet addiction and aggressive behavior have drawn attentions from researchers. As a result the focus has been on how to prevent them from spending too much of time in virtual societies and virtual worlds. A more interesting approach would be, by positively transferring or exchanging the values between the virtual and the real, to reach a more balanced experience in both worlds.

J. Hu and S. Offermans, “Beyond L\$: Values across the Virtual and the Real,” in International Conference On Advanced Infocomm Technology , Xi’an, China, 2009, vol. conf07a361, pp. 1-4.
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Caspr

“In 2009 Philips Research organizes for the first time the Philips Creative Challenge (PCC). This challenge is set up around the theme ‘hospitality’ to explore and showcase exceptional design ideas. Five Industrial Design faculties are invited to join the PCC and delegate two student teams to showcase their work at a dedicated exhibition during the Innovate! event. The PCC offers the opportunity for design education and industry to share and discuss their views on relevant themes within the field of Industrial Design.” — Philips Creative Challenge.

“Casper” is among the others, one of the two finalists, from the department of Industrial Design, TU/e. “The Caspr concepts explore hospitable behavior of digital products – for example a speaker system which shows curiosity and enthusiasm towards the guests’ music phone. Hereby the hosts open the door of their digital home and the guests can be surprised and actively stimulated to participate and share.”

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Scientometric Analysis Of The CHI Proceedings

Christoph Bartneck, Jun Hu

Abstract – The CHI conference has grown rapidly over the last 26 years. We present a quantitative analysis on the countries and organizations that contribute to its success. Only 7.8 percent of the countries are responsible for 80 percent of the papers in the CHI proceedings, and the USA is clearly the country with most papers. But the success of a country or organization does not depend only on the number of accepted papers, but also on their quality. We present a ranking of countries and organizations based on the h-index, an indicator that tries to balance the quantity and quality of scientific output based on a bibliometric analysis. The bibliometric analysis also allowed us to demonstrate the difficulty of judging quality. The papers acknowledged by the best paper award committee were not cited more often than a random sample of papers from the same years. The merit of the award is therefore unclear, and it might be worthwhile to allow the visitor to the conference to vote for the best paper.

Keywords: quality, bibliometrics, chi, history, h-index, g-index

C. Bartneck and J. Hu, “Scientometric Analysis of the CHI Proceedings,” in the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI2009), Boston, 2009, pp. 699-708.
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DOI: 10.1145/1518701.1518810
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IPML: Structuring distributed multimedia presentations in Ambient Intelligent Environments

Jun Hu, Loe Feijs

This paper addresses issues of distributing multimedia presentations in an ambient intelligent environment, examines the existing technologies and proposes IPML, a markup language that extends SMIL for distributed settings. It uses a metaphor of play, with which the timing and mapping issues in distributed presentations are covered in a natural way. A generic architecture for playback systems is also presented, which covers the timing and mapping issues of presenting an IPML script in heterogeneous ambient intelligent environments. Keywords: Distributed Multimedia, Software Architecture, Ambient Intelligence, Play

J. Hu and L. Feijs, “IPML: Structuring Distributed Multimedia Presentations in Ambient Intelligent Environments,” International Journal of Cognitive Informatics \& Natural Intelligence (IJCiNi), vol. 3, pp. 37-60, 2009.
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Creative Programming for Designers

The course “creative programing for designers” is exclusively designed for the USI program and for the 1st and 2nd year students at the department of Industrial Design, as an introduction to programming. Bearing in mind the students are not, and do not intend to be, computer scientists or programmers, the course approaches programing in a “designed” way:

“We will have fun with visuals, graphics (Processing) and even robotics (Arduino). You will be watching your program dancing. You will be listening to your program singing. If you want, you may give your program a hug.

But this assignment is not just for fun, You will be also learning serious things such as variables, data structures, control flows, interaction events and some basics of computer graphics and even robotics, of course, while having fun.”

see more at http://wiki.id.tue.nl/creapro.

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Designing Peace of Mind

Final USI project by Julia Benini. Report: [PDF, 1.8M]

The Peace of Mind project aimed at developing an innovation on child safety as part of the strategy to expand Philips’ domestic appliances portfolio for Mother & Childcare products. This section of Philips’ business unit was recently expanded with the purchase of Avent, a brand known for excellence in products such as baby bottles and breast pumps. With the acquisition, Philips-Avent was created…

J. Benini, Designing Peace of Mind, USI Final Report 978-90-444-0808-9, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2008.
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Exploring the Abuse of Robots

Christoph Bartneck and Jun Hu

Abstract: Robots have been introduced into our society, but their social role is still unclear. A critical issue is whether the robot’s exhibition of intelligent behaviour leads to the users’ perception of the robot as being a social actor, similar to the way in which people treat computers and media as social actors. The first experiment mimicked Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment, but on a robot. The participants were asked to administer electric shocks to a robot, and the results show that people have fewer concerns about abusing robots than about abusing other people. We refined the methodology for the second experiment by intensifying the social dilemma of the users. The participants were asked to kill the robot. In this experiment, the intelligence of the robot and the gender of the participants were the independent variables, and the users’ destructive behaviour towards the robot the dependent variable. Several practical and methodological problems compromised the acquired data, but we can conclude that the robot’s intelligence had a significant influence on the users’ destructive behaviour. We discuss the encountered problems and suggest improvements. We also speculate on whether the users’ perception of the robot as being “sort of alive” may have influenced the participants’ abusive behaviour.

Keywords: robots, perceived intelligence, killing, abuse

C. Bartneck, and J. Hu, “Exploring the Abuse of Robots,” Interaction Studies – Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 415-433, 2008.
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DOI: 10.1075/is.9.3.04bar
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Use of WebLabs as a platform for remote customer research

USI Final Project by Dirk van de Mortel. Draft report: [PDF, 500K]

WebLabs is the project name for a new, web-based platform for gathering user feedback. During　most, if not all phases in the (iterative) design cycle, representative users and/or clients can be　involved and leave feedback/input as part of User-Centered Design (UCD) process. This　feedback is valuable for an evaluator (e.g. HCI expert), who then compiles yielded information　and implements severe parts, by rendering them in the development of the product or service. Executing usability tests by means of a User Evaluation Method (UEM) as part of UCD is a　well-known method. Other usability methods are e.g. contextual interviews, focus groups, heuristic evaluation, interviews, personas, task analysis etc that all might be applicable as feedback system on the web.
However, until now little information is known on how laboratory testing compares to remote testing, concerning Philips Research applications (i.e. multimedia applications for consumer electronics). Important advantages of remote testing are A. Time and space independence (asynchrone) B. Relatively low cost for a worldwide (and cultural diffused) audience/participants and C. Automation of results. Important disadvantages are I) No control after publication or invitation of users II) Applies on the imagination of participants when a situation is simulated/mimicked III) Requires special preparation (low fidelity prototypes become digital or hybrid: send by post and evaluated with Web applications).

D. van de Mortel, Use of WebLabs as a platform for remote customer research, USI Final Report 9044408127, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2008.
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