Research on human-robot interactions, conducted by communication scientists Maartje de Graaf and Jan van Dijk at the University of Twente, received a Best Paper Award on March 9 with their research investigating the reasons why people refused or abandoned the use of a robot in their own homes.
Human-Robot Interaction conference
The award was hand out during the 12th edition of the yearly Human-Robot Interaction conference, held this year in Vienna, Austria. The Human-Robot Interaction conference is a high-ranking research venue for basic and applied human-robot interaction research. Researchers from across the world attend and submit their best work to HRI to exchange ideas about the latest theories, technology, data, and videos furthering the state-of-the-art in human-robot interaction.
Collaboration
Understanding the thoughts and motives behind non-use may help to identify obstacles for acceptance, and therefore enable robot developers to better adapt technological designs to the benefit of the users. The research was a collaboration with Somaya Ben Allouch, lector Technology, Health & Care at Saxion University of Applied Science.
Starting January 2017, Maartje started as a post-doctoral research associate at Brown University in the US with a Rubicon grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
