Daniel Davison has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science, a Master degree in Human-Media Interaction and a PhD in Social Robotics from the University of Twente. His PhD research focused on educational social robots for primary school children. He is particularly interested in designing instrumented learning materials, expressive robot behaviours and rich interactive dialogues to optimally support a child's inquiry learning process. He has worked as a researcher on large EU-funded projects, like EASEL, DE-ENIGMA and Council of Coaches.
Currently Daniel is director of the Interaction Lab. The lab aims to facilitate Human-Computer-Interaction education and research activities. It is a place where cutting-edge HCI research projects are designed, built, and evaluated using an extensive library of technologies and knowledge articles, and fully-equipped project/research rooms. Connections within the community of students and researchers are further strengthened through monthly-themed workshops and seminars. Daniel leads the Interaction Team, which consists of enthusiastic students who coordinate and run the lab's core activities.
measuring robots' social competence
As part of the EU FP7 projects EASEL and SQUIRREL, we developed an instrument for measuring young children's subjective perceptions of robots' social competence. Using an iterative approach, in two consecutive studies, we designed and validated the instrument on three different robotic platforms in three different interaction contexts. The instrument consists of two main components: 1) a semi-structured interview, and 2) a pictorial selection task. This measurement instrument was first presented during ICSR2017, Tsukuba, Japan.
Semi-structured interview
In the semi-structured interview we ask questions that have the purpose of eliciting explanations from the children about their subjective experience with, and their views about, the interaction with a robot. An overview of the questions is included in the original publication, and in the poster+handout document. Transcriptions of the interviews are analysed according to the following themes:
Theme A - Perceptions of the interaction with the robot
Theme B - Perceptions of the social capabilities of the robot
Within Theme A, we distinguish between explanations that fall in the following five categories: 1) task-related descriptions; 2) technology/design of the robot; 3) role of the robot; 4) aspects of the interaction with the robot; and 5) theory of mind of the robot. In Theme B, we distinguish the following three categories of descriptions of the robot's social capabilities: 1) machine-like; 2) the robot as social artefact; and 3) the robot as social agent.
Pictorial-selection task
In the pictorial selection task children select pictures that, in their opinion, "match" or "don’t match" the robot. They are then asked to elaborate on their choice, and explain in more detail. This enables them to use properties of familiar agents and objects to describe features of the robot. On the one hand, the pictures represent various social agents from a child's life, such as friends, teachers, pets and stuffed animals. On the other hand, they represent various less-social (technological) tools, such as a laptop, car and notebook. The pictures used for this task are shown on the back of this handout. The pictures are presented in random order, and examples can be found in the poster+handout document.
A child is first asked to select the picture that best matches with the robot, and elaborate/explain their choice. Their first selection will often show their most obvious associations they have with the robot. They are then asked to choose a second picture that best matches the robot. This second choice often reveals more varied underlying associations. This same process is repeated for pictures that, in their opinion, don't match with the robot.
Their choices and explanations are analysed with respect to the characteristics they use in their descriptions, according to the following categories: 1) references to social properties; 2) technology/design; 3) tool/function; or 4) educational properties.
Publications
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EASEL Project Archive (2022)[Dataset Types › Dataset]. Areda (University of Twente). Davison, D. P., Evers, V., Wijnen, F. M., Reidsma, D., Charisi, V. & van der Meij, J. Agents United: An Open Platform for Multi-Agent Conversational Systems (2021)In IVA '21: Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (pp. 17-24). Association for Computing Machinery. Beinema, T., Davison, D., Reidsma, D., Banos, O., Bruijnes, M., Donval, B., Fides Valero, Á., Heylen, D., Hofs, D., Huizing, G., Kantharaju, R. B., Klaassen, R., Kolkmeier, J., Konsolakis, K., Pease, A., Pelachaud, C., Simonetti, D., Snaith, M., Traver, V., … op den Akker, H.https://doi.org/10.1145/3472306.3478352Predictable Robots for Autistic Children — Variance in Robot Behaviour, Idiosyncrasies in Autistic Children’s Characteristics, and Child–Robot Engagement (2021)ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 28(5). Article 3468849. Schadenberg, B. R., Reidsma, D., Evers, V., Davison, D. P., Li, J. J., Heylen, D. K. J., Neves, C., Alvito, P., Shen, J., Pantic, M., Schuller, B., Cummins, N., Olaru, V., Sminchisescu, C., Dimitrijevic, S. B., Petrovic, S., Baranger, A., Williams, A., Alcorn, A. M. & Pellicano, E.https://doi.org/10.1145/3468849Words of encouragement: how praise delivered by a social robot changes children’s mindset for learning (2021)Journal on multimodal user interfaces, 15(1), 61-76. Davison, D. P., Wijnen, F. M., Charisi, V., van der Meij, J., Reidsma, D. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-020-00353-9"Hey robot, what do you think?": How children learn with a social robot (2021)[Thesis › PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT]. University of Twente. Davison, D. P.https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036551588 Usability of a Robot's Realistic Facial Expressions and Peripherals in Autistic Children's Therapy (2020)[Contribution to conference › Paper] 2nd Workshop on Social Robots in Therapy and Care 2019. Li, J., Davison, D., Schadenberg, B., Chevalier, P., Alcorn, A., Williams, A., Petrovic, S., Dimitrijevic, S. B., Shen, J., Pellicano, L. & Evers, V.Non-participatory user-centered design of accessible teacher-teleoperated robot and tablets for minimally verbal autistic children (2020)In PETRA '20: Proceedings of the 13th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (pp. 1-9). Article 8. Association for Computing Machinery. Li, J. J., Davison, D. P., Alcorn, A. M., Williams, A., Babovic Dimitrijevic, S., Petrovic, S., Chevalier, P., Schadenberg, B. R., Ainger, E., Pellicano, L. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1145/3389189.3393738Opportunities and Challenges for Adding Speech to Dialogues with a Council of Coaches (2020)[Book/Report › Report]. University of Twente. Bosdriesz, L., Reidsma, D., Davison, D. P. & op den Akker, H.Addressing Attention Difficulties in Autistic Children Using Multimodal Cues from a Humanoid Robot (2020)In HRI '20: Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’20 Companion) (pp. 334-336). ACM Publishing. Li, J. J., Petrovic, S., Davison, D., Babovic, S., Chevalier, P. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1145/3371382.3378276Working with a social robot in school: A long-term real-world unsupervised deployment (2020)In HRI 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 63-72) (ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction). Davison, D. P., Wijnen, F. M., Charisi, V., van der Meij, J., Evers, V. & Reidsma, D.https://doi.org/10.1145/3319502.3374803 Now We’re Talking: Learning by Explaining Your Reasoning to a Social Robot (2019)ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 9(1). Article 5. Wijnen, F. M., Davison, D. P., Reidsma, D., van der Meij, J., Charisi, V. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1145/3345508Designing a Social Robot to Support Children’s Inquiry Learning: A Contextual Analysis of Children Working Together at School (2019)International journal of social robotics, 12, 883–907. Davison, D. P., Wijnen, F. M., van der Meij, J., Reidsma, D. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00555-6 Flipper 2.0: A Pragmatic Dialogue Engine for Embodied Conversational Agents (2018)In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (pp. 43-50). ACM Press. van Waterschoot, J. B., Bruijnes, M., Flokstra, J., Reidsma, D., Davison, D. P., Theune, M. & Heylen, D. K. J.https://doi.org/10.1145/3267851.3267882Design of a Robot-Based Emotion-Mirroring Game to Engage Autistic Children with Emotional Expressions (2018)[Contribution to conference › Poster] The International Society for Autism Research Annual Meeting 2018. Schadenberg, B. R., Chevalier, P., Li, J. J., Ainger, E., Alcorn, A. M., Babovic, S., Davison, D. P., Charisi, V., Petrovic, S., Reidsma, D., Shen, J., Pellicano, E., Heylen, D. K. J. & Evers, V. Measuring Children’s Perceptions of Robots’ Social Competence: Design and Validation (2017)In Social Robotics: 9th International Conference, ICSR 2017, Tsukuba, Japan, November 22-24, 2017, Proceedings (pp. 676-686) (Lecture notes in computer science; Vol. 10652). Charisi, V., Davison, D. P., Wijnen, F. M., Reidsma, D. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_67Snoozle - A Robotic Pillow That Helps You Go to Sleep: HRI 2017 Student Design Competition (2017)In HRI '17: Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 399-400). Association for Computing Machinery. Vroon, J., Zaga, C., Davison, D., Kolkmeier, J. & Linssen, J.https://doi.org/10.1145/3029798.3034949Things that Make Robots Go HMMM : Heterogeneous Multilevel Multimodal Mixing to Realise Fluent, Multiparty, Human-Robot Interaction (2017)In Proceedings of the 12th Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces (eNTERFACE '16) (pp. 6-20). Telematica Instituut / CTIT. Davison, D., Gorer, B., Kolkmeier, J., Linssen, J. M., Schadenberg, B. R., van de Vijver, B., Campbell, N., Dertien, E. & Reidsma, D. Design challenges for long-term interaction with a robot in a science classroom (2016)[Contribution to conference › Paper] RO-MAN 2016 Workshop on Long-term Child-robot Interaction. Davison, D. P., Charisi, V., Wijnen, F. M., Papenmeier, A., van der Meij, J., Reidsma, D. & Evers, V.Evaluation Methods for User-Centered Child-Robot Interaction (2016)In Proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, RO-MAN 2016 (pp. MoA3.4) (Proceedings IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, RO-MAN; Vol. 2016). IEEE. Charisi, V., Davison, D. P., Reidsma, D. & Evers, V.https://doi.org/10.1109/ROMAN.2016.7745171The EASEL Project: Towards Educational Human-Robot Symbiotic Interaction (2016)In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Living Machines (pp. 297-306) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 9793). Springer. Reidsma, D., Charisi, V., Davison, D. P., Wijnen, F. M., van der Meij, J., Evers, V., Cameron, D., Fernando, S., Moore, R., Prescott, T., Mazzei, D., Pieroni, M., Cominelli, L., Garofalo, R., De Rossi, D., Vouloutsi, V., Zucca, R., Grechuta, K., Blancas, M. & Verschure, P.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_27Towards a Synthetic Tutor Assistant: The EASEL Project and its Architecture (2016)In Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems: 5th International Conference, Living Machines 2016, Edinburgh, UK, July 19-22, 2016. Proceedings (pp. 353-364) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 9793). Springer. Vouloutsi, V., Blancas, M., Zucca, R., Omedas, P., Reidsma, D., Davison, D. P., Charisi, V., Wijnen, F. M., van der Meij, J., Evers, V., Cameron, D., Fernando, S., Moore, R., Prescott, T., Mazzei, D., Pieroni, M., Cominelli, L., Garofalo, R., De Rossi, D. & Verschure, P.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_32Physical extracurricular activities in educational child-robot interaction (2016)In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction (NF-HRI 2016). European Respiratory Society. Davison, D., Schindler, L. & Reidsma, D.https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02736Child, Robot and Educational Material: A Triadic Interaction (2016)In HRI'16: The Eleventh ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (pp. 607-608) (ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction). IEEE. Davison, D. P.https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI.2016.7451879 Inquiry learning with a social robot: can you explain that to me? (2015)In Proceedings of New Friends 2015: the 1st international conference on social robotics in therapy and education (pp. 24-25). Windesheim Flevoland. Wijnen, F. M., Charisi, V., Davison, D. P., van der Meij, J., Reidsma, D. & Evers, V.http://www.newfriends2015.org/Proceedings/ProceedingsNF2015.pdfTowards a child-robot symbiotic co-development: a theoretical approach (2015)In Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on "New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction" (pp. 331-336). The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB). Charisi, V., Davison, D. P., Wijnen, F. M., van der Meij, J., Reidsma, D., Prescott, T., van Joolingen, W. & Evers, V.https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/events/2015/AISB2015/proceedings/hri/16-Charisi-towardsachild.pdf 