Technology

  Technology Paper details: Azenkot et al's ”Enabling Building Service Robots to Guide Blind People " and Lee et aL's ”Snackbot ' papers both display how design research can be used to inform the creation of robots that are appropriate to a specific social context, user group, etc. After reading the two papers. briefly answer the following questions: 1. Both papers are concerned with the design of "service robots". How are service robots different from social robots more generally? What kinds of things do designers need to keep in mind when they are designing these kinds of robots? 2. Both papers included teams of people with diverse expertise. What kinds of expertise did people participating in the design have? Why are these different types of expertise important to the development of the design? 3. Both projects also included users in the design process. What were the ways in which each project included users? How did the ways in which users were included differ among the projects? How did including users contribute to the robot design process and expected outcomes? a. Taking the methods discussed in these two papers into account, how would you go about performing design research to develop your group's robot prototype? First state the domain/ issue that your group is designing a robot for (this can be a revised version of the statement you gave in your mission statement based on your lit review and thinking since then). Then identify three outstanding questions that you need to answer in order to develop a robot; these should be more specific than what should the robot like like" (e.g. "would it be better for the robot to be animal-like, human-like, or machine-like [for users in this domain]?," "how can we effectively express emotions like positive response/praise, negative response/correction, neutral response through the robot's behavior [can be more specifically gestures. body postures, language, etc.]?"). Finally, describe at least one method you might use for answering each of these questions, using examples from the readings or class lecture(s), or other methods that you know of that might be pertinent. Say why you think that particular method is appropriate for the question you are trying to answer (you can include practical concerns, e.g. user availability, as well as the need to know specific kinds of information).