Professor Alessandro Vinciarelli from the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow will speak on Synthetic impressions through artificial gestures.
Abstract: The goal of this talk is to show how simple synthetic gestures - performed with a commercial robotic platform - can be used to understand the way human observers perceive a robot. In particular, the talk will show how the main parameters of a gesture (amplitude and speed) interact with the perception of the interaction quality, the attribution of personality traits and the effectiveness of gesture-based communication. Furthermore, the talk will show how the attraction paradigm (the relationship between similarity and attraction in interpersonal relationships) applies to interactions as simple as the exchange of a synthetic gesture.