Author name cluster

Ross T. Sowell

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

3 papers

1 author row

IROS Conference 2023 Conference Paper

Development and Evaluation of Exploratory Experiences to Facilitate Reasoning About Robotic Systems

Sogol Balali
Marisa Hudspeth
Ian Afflerbach
Hannah Helgesen
Jessica McCurry
Walid Abu Al-Afia
Kelton Bruslind
Kathryn Hays

This paper introduces a novel interactive approach —Exploratory Experiences— that aims to improve the ability of people to reason about the capabilities and limitations of robotic technology. We focus on two areas: robot navigation and object detection. We evaluate the Exploratory Experiences with a novel approach that measures the participant's ability to predict when the robot will fail, following up with asking the reason and a possible fix. We show that our approach is effective at improving participants' understanding of potential robot navigation failures and that they already have the skills to detect potential object detection failures when presented with the correct stimuli.

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ICRA Conference 2022 Conference Paper

Effects of Interfaces on Human-Robot Trust: Specifying and Visualizing Physical Zones

Marisa Hudspeth
Sogol Balali
Cindy M. Grimm
Ross T. Sowell

In this paper we investigate the influence interfaces and feedback have on human-robot trust levels when operating in a shared physical space. The task we use is specifying a “no-go” region for a robot in an indoor environment. We evaluate three styles of interface (physical, AR, and map-based) and four feedback mechanisms (no feedback, robot drives around the space, an AR “fence”, and the region marked on the map). Our evaluation looks at both usability and trust. Specifically, if the participant trusts that the robot “knows” where the no-go region is and their confidence in the robot's ability to avoid that region. We use both self-reported and indirect measures of trust and usability. Our key findings are: 1) interfaces and feedback do influence levels of trust; 2) the participants largely preferred a mixed interface-feedback pair, where the modality for the interface differed from the feedback.

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ICRA Conference 2004 Conference Paper

Shepherding Behaviors

Jyh-Ming Lien
O. Burçhan Bayazit
Ross T. Sowell
Samuel Rodríguez
Nancy M. Amato

Shepherding behaviors are a type of flocking behavior in which outside agents guide or control members of a flock. Shepherding behaviors can be found in various forms in nature. For example, herding, covering, patrolling and collecting are common types of shepherding behaviors. In this work, we investigate ways to simulate these types of behaviors. A shepherd uses roadmaps to steer the flock and to re-group separated flock members. This paper focuses on improving the shepherd's movements to gain better control of the flock's motion and use this improved control to demonstrate a wider variety of shepherding behaviors.

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