In this paper, we have investigated the concept of “Cultural Robotics” with regard to the evolution of social into cultural robots in the 21st Century. By defining the concept of culture, the potential development of a culture between humans and robots is explored. Based on the cultural values of the robotics developers, and the learning ability of current robots, cultural attributes in this regard are in the process of being formed, which would define the new concept of cultural robotics. According to the importance of the embodiment of robots in the sense of presence, the influence of robots in communication culture is anticipated. The sustainability of robotics culture based on diversity for cultural communities for various acceptance modalities is explored in order to anticipate the creation of different attributes of culture between robots and humans in the future.

This paper investigates the optimal scheduling of cognitive radio network links under an interference temperature (IT) model. A link layer model based on the IT model has been developed. A mathematical cross-layered model for the cognitive radio network link scheduling problem under the IT model is presented. The proposed cross-layered model optimizes the performance of the cognitive radio network across several network layers. The objective is to activate as many simultaneous primary/secondary links while the IT constraints are satisfied. The IT-based link layer scheduling can potentially increase the network performance. The proposed model advocates the potential benefits of adopting a location-aware and IT-based MAC protocol in modern wireless networks.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel method for evaluation of human-robot affection. The model is inspired by the scientific methods of human-human love evaluation. This paper would benefit the researchers in the field of developing new technologies where emotional interaction is involved. Design/methodology/approach: Among the two available options of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and user study, the latter is adopted and the conventional method of Love Attitude Scale is transformed for human-robot interaction as Lovotics (love + robotics) Love Attitude Scale. A user study is conducted to evaluate the emotional effect of interaction with the robot. Findings: The proposed method is employed in order to evaluate the performance of Lovotics robot. In total, 20 users experienced interaction with Lovotics robot and answered questionnaires which were designed based on the psychology of love, especially to measure love scales between the participants and the robot. Data from the user study are analyzed statistically to evaluate the overall performance of the designed robot. Research limitations/implications: Various aspects including human to robot love styles, robot to human love styles, overall love values and gender study are investigated during the data analysis. The concept of human-robot affection is still in initial stage of development. Personal and social robots are increasing and much limitation from artificial intelligence, mechanical development and integration still exist. Practical implications: This is a multidisciplinary research field utilizing fundamentals concepts from robotics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, psychology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, social science, computer science and engineering. Social implications: Considering the recent technical advancement in robotics which is brining robots closer to home, this paper aims to bridge the gap between human and robot affection measurement. The final goal is to introduce robots to the society which are useful and can be especially used to take care of those in need such as elderly. Originality/value: This paper is one of the first kind to get inspired from scientific human love evaluation methods and apply that to human-robot application.

Offshore wind turbine (OWT) inspection research is receiving increasing interest as the sector grows worldwide. Wind farms are far from emergency services and experience extreme weather and winds. This hazardous environment lends itself to unmanned approaches, reducing human exposure to risk. Increasing automation in inspections can reduce human effort and financial costs. Despite the benefits, research on automating inspection is sparse. This work proposes that OWT inspection can be described as a multi-robot coverage path planning problem. Reviews of multi-robot coverage exist, but to the best of our knowledge, none captures the domain-specific aspects of an OWT inspection. In this paper, we present a review on the current state of the art of multi-robot coverage to identify gaps in research relating to coverage for OWT inspection. To perform a qualitative study, the PICo (population, intervention, and context) framework was used. The retrieved works are analysed according to three aspects of coverage approaches: environmental modelling, decision making, and coordination. Based on the reviewed studies and the conducted analysis, candidate approaches are proposed for the structural coverage of an OWT. Future research should involve the adaptation of voxel-based ray-tracing pose generation to UAVs and exploration, applying semantic labels to tasks to facilitate heterogeneous coverage and semantic online task decomposition to identify the coverage target during the run time.

Recent advances in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication show that equipping base stations (BSs) with large antenna arrays can significantly improve the performance of cellular networks. Massive MIMO has the potential to mitigate the interference in the network and enhance the average throughput per user. On the other hand, dynamic time-division duplexing (TDD), which allows neighboring cells to operate with different uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) subframe configurations, is a promising enhancement for the conventional static TDD. Compared with static TDD, dynamic TDD can offer more flexibility to accommodate various UL and DL traffic patterns across different cells, but may result in additional interference among cells transmitting in different directions. Based on the unique characteristics and properties of massive MIMO and dynamic TDD, we propose a marriage of these two techniques, i.e., to have massive MIMO address the limitation of dynamic TDD in macrocell (MC) networks. Specifically, we advocate that the benefits of dynamic TDD can be fully extracted in MC networks equipped with massive MIMO, i.e., the BS-to-BS interference can be effectively removed by increasing the number of BS antennas. We provide detailed analysis using random matrix theory to show that the effect of the BS-to-BS interference on UL transmissions vanishes as the number of BS antennas per user grows infinitely large. Last but not least, we validate our analysis by numerical simulations.