AJung Moon is a Vanier Scholar studying human-robot interaction and roboethics under the supervision of Drs. Elizabeth Croft and Mike Van der Loos. AJung received her Masters of Applied Science from UBC in 2012, specializing in the design and implementation of robot nonverbal gestures (hesitations) that can be used during human-robot resource conflict situations.
Her current research focus is on studying the intersection of human-robot interaction (HRI) and roboethics. In HRI, she specializes in designing nonverbal communication cues (hand gestures, gaze cues) for robots for human-robot collaboration contexts (more on her research projects). Her PhD thesis is on developing ways for humans and robots to ‘negotiate’ using nonverbal gestures to quickly resolve resource conflicts.
In roboethics, she co-founded the Open Roboethics initiative, a roboethics think tank. She explores ways in which various stakeholders of robotics technologies can work together to influence interactive robot designs.
For more about AJung’s involvement in robotics, please visit www.profile.amoon.ca.
Research Description
People share spaces and objects with each other every day. When conflicts regarding access to these shared resources occur, people communicate with each other to negotiate a solution. But what should a robot do when such conflicts occur between a human and a robotic assistant? Answers to this question depend on the context of the situation. In order for robots to be successfully deployed in homes and workplaces, it is important for robots to be equipped with the ability to make socially and morally acceptable decisions about the conflict at hand. However, robots today are not very good at making such decisions. The objective of my research is to investigate an interactive paradigm of human-robot conflict resolution that does not involve complicated, artificial moral decision making. I am currently working on a robotic system that can communicatively negotiate about resource conflicts with its human partner using nonverbal gestures.
Studies suggest that people feel more positively toward robots that work with people rather than those that replace them. This means that in order to create robots that can collaborate and share tasks with humans, human-human interaction dynamics must be understood – key components of which could be replicated in human-robot interaction.
My master’s research project focused on how simple a non-verbal gesture (like that of jerky hesitant motion of your hand when you and another person reach for the same last piece of chocolate at the same time) can superimposed on the functional reaching motions of a robot, so that robots can express its uncertainty to human users. This research project led to the development of a characteristic motion profile, called the Acceleration-based Hesitation Profile (AHP) a robotic manipulator can use to generate humanlike hesitation motions as a response to resource conflicts (e.g., reaching for the same thing at the same time).
Take a look at how the designed hesitations look in contrast to abrupt collision avoidance responses.
Designed hesitation responses (AHP):
Abrupt stopping responses:
Publications
Thesis:
- Moon, A., What Should a Robot Do?: Design and Implementation of Human-like Hesitation Gestures as a Response Mechanism for Human-robot Resource Conflicts, M.A.Sc. thesis, Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada [link]
Journal:
- Moon, A., Parker, C.A.C., Croft, E.A., and Van der Loos, H.F.M., Design and Impact of Hesitation Gestures during Human-Robot Resource Conflicts, Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 2(3), 2013, DOI= 10.5898/JHRI.2.3.Moon
- Moon, A., Danielson, P., and Van der Loos, H.F.M., Survey-based Discussions on Morally Contentious Applications of Interactive Robotics, International Journal of Social Robotics (DOI 10.1007/s12369-011-0120-0)
Conference:
- Moon, A., Troniak, D.M., Gleeson, B., Pan, M.K.X.J., Zheng, M., Blumer, B.A., MacLean, K., and Croft, E.A., Meet Me where I’m Gazing: How Shared Attention Gaze Affects Human-Robot Handover Timing, HRI 2014. (**Winner of the Best Paper Award)
- Moon, A., Van der Loos, H.F.M., and Croft, E. A., Nonverbal Dialogues for Conflict Resolution: Exploring Hesitation Gestures in Human-Robot Conflict of Resource Scenarios, HRI Pioneers Workshop 2014
- Hart, J. W., Gleeson, B., Pan, M., Moon, A., MacLean, K., and Croft, E. A., Gesture, Gaze, Touch, and Hesitation: Timing Cues for Collaborative Work, HRI Workshop on Timing in Human-Robot Interaction 2014
- Calisgan, E., Moon, A., Bassani, C., Ferreira, F., Operto, F., Veruggio, G., Croft, A., and Van der Loos, H.F.M., Open Roboethics: Accelerated Policy Design, Implementation and Demonstration of Socially Acceptable Behaviors, We Robot 2013: Getting Down to Business
- Moon, A., Calisgan, C., Operto, F., Veruggio, G., and Van der Loos, H.F.M., Open Roboethics: Establishing an Online Community for Accelerated Policy and Design Change, We Robot 2012: Inaugural Conference on Legal and Policy Issues Relating to Robotics
- Moon, A., Parker, C.A.C., Croft, E.A., and Van der Loos, H.F.M., Did You See It Hesitate? – Empirically Grounded Design of Hesitation Trajectories for Collaborative Robots, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2011 (DOI 10.1109/IROS.2011.6048228)
- Pan, M., Cheng, G., Himmetoglu, G., Moon, A., Hazelton, T., MacLean, K., Croft E. A., Now, Where Was I? – Physiologically-Triggered Bookmarking, International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2011 (DOI 10.1145/1978942.1978995)
- Pan, M.K.X.J., Chang, J.-S., Himmetoglu, G.H., Moon, A., Hazelton, T.W., MacLean, K.E., Croft, E.A. (2011). Galvanic skin response-derived bookmarking of an audio stream. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA ’11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1135-1140 (DOI 10.1145/1979742.1979716)
- Moon, A., Grajales, F., and Van der Loos, H.F.M., Robots, Multi-User Virtual Environments and Healthcare: Synergies for Future Directions, International Conference for Information Technology and Communications in Health 2011 (PMID 21335746)
- Moon, A., Panton, B., Van der Loos, H.F.M., and Croft, E.A., Using Hesitation Gestures for Safe and Ethical Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE ICRA 2010 Workshop on Interactive Communication for Autonomous Intelligent Robots, Anchorage, United States
