16-467: Human-Robot Interaction
Homework Assignments
Spring 2016

You will be divided into small groups (~4 people) to work on the homeworks and project collaboratively. Nominally, the groups will stay the same over the course of the semester. If you have problems working within your group, please contact the course instructors. There will also be occasional "mini-projects," which you will need to do on your own and that will count towards the class participation portion of your grade.

All homeworks and the term project include presentations and writing, as specified by each assignments. The term project will have a major writeup which should be about 10 pages. Each group should submit a single writeup, and all group members should contribute equally to the writeups (along, of course, to solving the homework problems, themselves). Each homework will also have short (15 minute, maximum) presentations by each group, with slides, followed by a discussion period, which will count towards the grade for that assignment. The term project will have a 20 minute presentation for each group, and should include slides.

Late Policy

Assignments

• Mini-Project 1: Believable Robot Characters
  Out: Wednesday, January 13
  Due: Wednesday, January 20
  
  • Read Believable Robot Characters
  • Pick a film that features humanoid robots
  • Write 2 page paper (12pt font, single spaced) comparing and contrasting the realities of current-day robots with the film depiction, in terms of capabilities, intelligence, perception by people, etc. The paper should include details from both the article and the film to support your arguments.

• Homework 1: Generating Project Ideas Handout
  Out: Monday, January 25
  Due: Wednesday, February 3, plus presentations
  

• Homework 2: Interaction Design Handout
  Out: Wednesday, February 10
  Due: Wednesday, February 24, plus presentations
  

• Homework 3: Autonomy Design Handout
  Out: Wednesday, March 2
  Due: Monday, March 21, plus presentations
  

• Homework 4: Study Design Handout
  Out: Wednesday, March 23
  Due: Monday, April 4
  Presentations: Monday, April 4 and Wednesday, April 6
  

• Term Project
  Project Presentations: Thursday, April 21 7-10p in Gates/Hillman 4405
  
  The in-class presentation should focus on the final robot design, actual protocol used, and results obtained. You will have 20 minutes to present, with 10 minutes for class discussion.
  Project Written Reports Due: Friday, 11pm, April 29
  
  The report should follow the outline of the report in Homework 4. In addition to what you did for Homework 4, your report should include:
  • A separate section on the robot design, including detailed description (plus pictures) of the design of the robot and how the design evolved from Homework 3 (in response to changes in the protocol and issues in implementation);
  • Any changes made to the protocol from what was presented in Homework 4;
  • Full results section, showing statistical analyses of the collected data;
  • Full discussion section, including discussion of the results, possible biases, and what you could have done to improve the experiment.
  • It would also be very useful to include a video of your experiment.