This paper highlights the importance of considering especially individual differences in intelligence when designing systems and interfaces due to their impact on operator performance in new and unfamiliar situations. For this purpose, an approach is introduced which allows assessing performancerelevant abilities of the operators on the basis of their performance on everyday life tasks. In orde...

Route memory is frequently assessed in virtual environments. These environments can be presented in a fully controlled manner and are easy to use. Yet they lack the physical involvement that participants have when navigating real environments. For some aspects of route memory this may result in reduced performance in virtual environments. We assessed route memory performance in four different e...

This paper examines human impedance perception ability during manipulation of an impedance-controlled robot, especially as regards perception accuracy and differential limen. In the experiments, a subject is instructed to move the handle of an impedance-controlled robot and to perceive the presented value of the robot impedance. Experimental results show that both motor control ability and soma...

Dot arrays are often used to study basic numerical skills across cultures, species and development. Researchers investigate the ability of subjects to discriminate between dot arrays, as a function of the ratio or distance between their numerosities. Such studies have contributed significantly to the number sense theory (i.e., that humans are born with the ability to process numerosities, and s...

Spatial ability predicts performance in mathematics and eventual expertise in science, technology and engineering. Spatial skills have also been shown to rely on neuronal networks partially shared with mathematics. Understanding the nature of this association can inform educational practices and intervention for mathematical underperformance. Using data on two aspects of spatial ability and thr...

In this paper, we give an overview of the results of a Human-Robot Interaction experiment, in a near zerocontext environment. We stimulate the formation of a network joining together human agents and non-human agents in order to examine emergent conditions and social actions. Human subjects, in teams of 3-4 are presented with a task: to coax a robot (by any means) from one side of a table to th...

Waltz is a typical example of physical human-human interaction (pHHI) in a well-structured environment, which makes waltz a good start point for understanding pHHI and physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). Waltz involves two dancers. Understanding of the female dancer’s abilities in dancing may help designing robots that can physically interact with human in intuitive ways. Therefore, our go...

The Team of Bielefeld (ToBI) has been founded in 2009. The RoboCup activities are embedded in a long-term research history towards human-robot interaction with laypersons in regular home environments. The RoboCup@Home competition is an important benchmark and milestone for this goal in terms of robot capabilities as well as the system engineering approach. For RoboCup 2014, we mainly improved a...

Assistive robot systems require a robot to interact closely with people and to perform joint human-robot tasks. Interaction with humans comes with additional challenges to those in other real-world scenarios. Robot plans must be especially flexible and take into account human abilities and preferences. For providing this level of flexibility, we propose a framework for transformational reactive...

Human-robot interaction requires the robot to explicitly reason on human environments and on its own capacities to achieve tasks in a collaborative way with a human partner. We have devised a decisional framework for human-robot interactive task achievement, embedded in a cognitive architecture, and that is aimed to allow the robot not only to accomplish its tasks but also to produce behaviours...