Browsing by Author "Mitchell, Wade J."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The appearance, speech, and motion of synthetic humans influences our empathy toward them
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2011-04-08) MacDorman, Karl F.; Ho, Chin-Chang; Lu, Amy S.; Mitchell, Wade J.; Patel, Himalaya; Srinivas, Preethi; Schermerhorn, Paul W.; Scheutz, Matthias
    Humanoid robots and computer-generated humans can elicit responses that people usually direct toward each other. As a result these humanlike entities may stand in for human actors during experiment-driven research in the social and psychological sciences as well as in some branches of neuroscience. Such research concerns factors like facial appearance, physical embodiment, speech quality, fluidity of motion, and contingent interactivity. A goal of this research is to understand why some humanlike entities are more successful than others at eliciting people’s empathy. Pursuing this goal informs new principles for creating synthetic humans that seem more believable in narratives and narrative-based interventions.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    PERVASIVE TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE ROAD RAGE: A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF METABOLIC CHANGES IN INDIVIDUALS WHILE DRIVING
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) King, Amy; Mitchell, Wade J.; Defazio, Joseph; Shelton, Todd
    Since 1990, there have been 250,000 fatalities from car accidents in the United States (Warp, 2006). According to the United States Department of Transportation (nhtsa.dot.com), two-thirds of those fatalities are from acci-dents caused by road rage. That means 166,666 people died due to driver’s inability to control their anger on the road. Road rage is a serious issue that should be addressed. Often times, people don’t even realize they are becom-ing dangerously agitated until it is too late. The purpose of this study is to measure a drivers’ reaction to diverse stimuli in a simulated environment in order to examine how raising the awareness of the symptoms described might allow the driver to modify his/her behavior before engaging in disas-trous consequences. The stimuli used in testing for this study would include an array of graphics, videos and sounds. This study uses an Arduino board that connects to three bio-metric sensors which will track the users pulse, temperature and skin-conductivity. Whenever the human body is under mental stress, the parasympathetic activities of his/her heart decreases and the sympathetic activity increases (Rani, 2002). In other words, their pulse increases dramatically. Other signs of agitation include, but are not limited to: conductivity of skin increases and the tensing of muscles which causes the temperature of their extremities (fingers, hands and feet) to drop signifi-cantly. Upon IRB approval, this research will be conducted with fifty partici-pants. The data extracted from testing will be analyzed and finding’s report-ed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Probing People's Attitudes and Behaviors Using Humanlike Agents
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2010-04-09) MacDorman, Karl F.; Gadde, Prathik; Ho, Chin-Chang; Mitchell, Wade J.; Schermerhorn, Paul W.; Scheutz, Matthias
    Android science is an interdisciplinary framework for studying human cognition and interaction based on the finding that android robots—and, to lesser extents, humanoid robots and computergenerated humans—can elicit the sorts of responses people direct toward each other. As a result, these humanlike agents can be used as stand-ins for humans in social, psychological, cognitive, and neuroscientific experiments. We describe a selection of current and recently completed investigations into some of the potential factors influencing attitudes and behavior toward humanlike agents, including facial appearance, physical embodiment, speech quality, fluidity of motion, and contingent interactivity.