Smart cities and communities (SCC) constitute a new paradigm in urban development. SCC ideate a data-centered society aimed at improving efficiency by automating and optimizing activities and utilities. Information and communication technology along with Internet of Things enables data collection and with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) situation awareness can be obtained to feed the SCC actors with enriched knowledge. This paper describes AI perspectives in SCC and gives an overview of AI-based technologies used in traffic to enable road vehicle automation and smart traffic control. Perception, smart traffic control and driver modeling are described along with open research challenges and standardization to help introduce advanced driver assistance systems and automated vehicle functionality in traffic. To fully realize the potential of SCC, to create a holistic view on a city level, availability of data from different stakeholders is necessary. Further, though AI technologies provide accurate predictions and classifications, there is an ambiguity regarding the correctness of their outputs. This can make it difficult for the human operator to trust the system. Today there are no methods that can be used to match function requirements with the level of detail in data annotation in order to train an accurate model. Another challenge related to trust is explainability: models can have difficulty explaining how they came to certain conclusions, so it is difficult for humans to trust them.

Social robots are being designed to help support people’s well-being in domestic and public environments. To address increasing incidences of psychological and emotional difficulties such as loneliness, and a shortage of human healthcare workers, we believe that robots will also play a useful role in engaging with people in therapy, on an emotional and creative level, e.g., in music, drama, playing, and art therapy. Here, we focus on the latter case, on an autonomous robot capable of painting with a person. A challenge is that the theoretical foundations are highly complex; we are only just beginning ourselves to understand emotions and creativity in human science, which have been described as highly important challenges in artificial intelligence. To gain insight, we review some of the literature on robots used for therapy and art, potential strategies for interacting, and mechanisms for expressing emotions and creativity. In doing so, we also suggest the usefulness of the responsive art approach as a starting point for art therapy robots, describe a perceived gap between our understanding of emotions in human science and what is currently typically being addressed in engineering studies, and identify some potential ethical pitfalls and solutions for avoiding them. Based on our arguments, we propose a design for an art therapy robot, also discussing a simplified prototype implementation, toward informing future work in the area.

We report on an exploratory study conducted at a graduate school in Sweden with a humanoid robot, Baxter. First, we describe a list of potentially useful capabilities for a robot teaching assistant derived from brainstorming and interviews with faculty members, teachers, and students. These capabilities consist of reading educational materials out loud, greeting, alerting, allowing remote operation, providing clarifications, and moving to carry out physical tasks. Secondly, we present feedback on how the robot’s capabilities, demonstrated in part with the Wizard of Oz approach, were perceived, and iteratively adapted over the course of several lectures, using the Engagement Profile tool. Thirdly, we discuss observations regarding the capabilities and the development process. Our findings suggest that using a social robot as a teaching assistant is promising using the chosen capabilities and Engagement Profile tool. We find that enhancing the robot’s autonomous capabilities and further investigating the role of embodiment are some important topics to be considered in future work.

With power comes responsibility: as robots become more advanced and prevalent, the role they will play in human society becomes increasingly important. Given that violence is an important problem, the question emerges if robots could defend people, even if doing so might cause harm to someone. The current study explores the broad context of how people perceive the acceptability of such robot self-defense (RSD) in terms of (1) theory, via a rapid scoping review, and (2) public opinion in two countries. As a result, we summarize and discuss: increasing usage of robots capable of wielding force by law enforcement and military, negativity toward robots, ethics and legal questions (including differences to the well-known trolley problem), control in the presence of potential failures, and practical capabilities that such robots might require. Furthermore, a survey was conducted, indicating that participants accepted the idea of RSD, with some cultural differences. We believe that, while substantial obstacles will need to be overcome to realize RSD, society stands to gain from exploring its possibilities over the longer term, toward supporting human well-being in difficult times.

Socially assistive robots are being designed to support people’s well-being in contexts such as art therapy where human therapists are scarce, by making art together with people in an appropriate way. A challenge is that various complex and idiosyncratic concepts relating to art, like emotions and creativity, are not yet well understood. Guided by the principles of speculative design, the current article describes the use of a collaborative prototyping approach involving artists and engineers to explore this design space, especially in regard to general and personalized art-making strategies. This led to identifying a goal: to generate representational or abstract art that connects emotionally with people’s art and shows creativity. For this, an approach involving personalized “visual metaphors” was proposed, which balances the degree to which a robot’s art is influenced by interacting persons. The results of a small user study via a survey provided further insight into people’s perceptions: the general design was perceived as intended and appealed; as well, personalization via representational symbols appeared to lead to easier and clearer communication of emotions than via abstract symbols. In closing, the article describes a simplified demo, and discusses future challenges. Thus, the contribution of the current work lies in suggesting how a robot can seek to interact with people in an emotional and creative way through personalized art; thereby, the aim is to stimulate ideation in this promising area and facilitate acceptance of such robots in everyday human environments.

This research constitutes an initial investigation into key issues which arise in designing a flying humanoid robot (FHR), with a focus on human-robot interaction (HRI). The humanoid form offers an interface for natural communication; flight offers excellent mobility. Combining both will yield companion robots capable of approaching, accompanying, and communicating naturally with humans in difficult environments. Problematic is how such a robot should best fly around humans, and what effect a robot's flight will have on a person in terms of non-verbal communicative cues. To answer these questions, we propose an extension to existing proxemics theory (“z-proxemics”) and predict how typical humanoid flight motions will be perceived (“z-kinesics”). Data obtained from participants watching animated sequences are analyzed to check our predictions. The paper also reports on the building of a flying humanoid robot, which we will use in interactions.