Frauke Zeller

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Dr Frauke Zeller is a professor of HCI (Human-computer Interaction) & Creative Informatics at Edinburgh Napier, co-creator of the first hitchhiking robot. [1]

Contents

Professor Frauke Zeller
Alma mater University of Kassel
Known for
  • Professor of Human-Robot Interaction
  • joint creator of HitchBOT
Scientific career
Fields
  • Culture and Communities
  • Health
  • AI and Technologies
Institutions
Website https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6835-2529

Biography

Dr. Frauke Zeller received her Ph.D. (Dr. phil.) from Kassel University, Germany, in English Linguistics and Computational Philology. [2] After that, she worked in the Institute of Media and Communication Studies at Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany. Frauke's Habilitation (highest academic degree in Germany) research project dealt with methods to analyze online communities.

From 2011 to 2013 she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, funded by the European Commission, and was a researcher in Canada as well as the UK (University College London). She was offered a tenure track assistant professorship at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2013, where she stayed until 2022.

After that, she joined Edinburgh Napier University in 2023 as Professor of HCI & Creative Informatics in the School of Computing and Engineering & the Built Environment. [1] [3]

Other Positions

Zeller has also held a range of research-related positions, such as director of the Centre for Communicating Knowledge, director of The Creative School Catalyst (a research catalyst and facilitator), DAAD Research Ambassador, and is still advisory council member of GAIN (the German Academic International Network).[ citation needed ]

Research

Zeller's research expertise spans several areas, such as methods for big data analyses in audience analytics, AI ethics and Human-Computer and -Robot Interaction. Zeller has been involved in multiple international research projects and was awarded a range of major research grants, among them a Tri-Council grant (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC), and has been co-applicant and collaborator in a project that develops AI-based social robots for pediatric pain management, funded by the new UK-Canada AI Research programme.

Other projects are related to AI, such as developing higher education training courses in Responsible AI (funded by NSERC), analyzing social media content related to human rights issues and youth in Central America (RCYP), the development of AI-based technologies like chatbots for news media outlets and knowledge translation (SSHRC funded Partnership project, GJIL and XJO). Other projects were funded by the European Commission (Network of Excellence) or the German Research Foundation. Zeller is also the co-creator of the first hitchhiking robot - hitchBOT. [4] The project garnered broad public interest all around the world, and since then, she has been working on human-robot interaction and AI-related projects. [1]

Projects

Selected publications

Dr. Frauke Zeller has published more than 30 academic papers with more than 250 citations [6] including:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hitchhiking</span> Asking people, usually strangers, for a ride in their road vehicle

Hitchhiking is a means of transportation that is gained by asking individuals, usually strangers, for a ride in their car or other vehicle. The ride is usually, but not always, free.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Health informatics</span> Computational approaches to health care

Health informatics is the study and implementation of computer structures and algorithms to improve communication, understanding, and management of medical information. It can be view as branch of engineering and applied science.

Bonnie A. Nardi is an emeritus professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she led the TechDec research lab in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is well known for her work on activity theory, interaction design, games, social media, and society and technology. She was elected to the ACM CHI academy in 2013. She retired in 2018.

Developmental robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a scientific field which aims at studying the developmental mechanisms, architectures and constraints that allow lifelong and open-ended learning of new skills and new knowledge in embodied machines. As in human children, learning is expected to be cumulative and of progressively increasing complexity, and to result from self-exploration of the world in combination with social interaction. The typical methodological approach consists in starting from theories of human and animal development elaborated in fields such as developmental psychology, neuroscience, developmental and evolutionary biology, and linguistics, then to formalize and implement them in robots, sometimes exploring extensions or variants of them. The experimentation of those models in robots allows researchers to confront them with reality, and as a consequence, developmental robotics also provides feedback and novel hypotheses on theories of human and animal development.

In artificial intelligence, an embodied agent, also sometimes referred to as an interface agent, is an intelligent agent that interacts with the environment through a physical body within that environment. Agents that are represented graphically with a body, for example a human or a cartoon animal, are also called embodied agents, although they have only virtual, not physical, embodiment. A branch of artificial intelligence focuses on empowering such agents to interact autonomously with human beings and the environment. Mobile robots are one example of physically embodied agents; Ananova and Microsoft Agent are examples of graphically embodied agents. Embodied conversational agents are embodied agents that are capable of engaging in conversation with one another and with humans employing the same verbal and nonverbal means that humans do.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human–Computer Interaction Institute</span>

The Human–Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) is a department within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is considered one of the leading centers of human–computer interaction research, and was named one of the top ten most innovative schools in information technology by Computer World in 2008. For the past three decades, the institute has been the predominant publishing force at leading HCI venues, most notably ACM CHI, where it regularly contributes more than 10% of the papers. Research at the institute aims to understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities by integrating aspects of computer science, design, social science, and learning science.

The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI).

Susanne Boll is a Professor for Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. and is a member of the board at the research institute OFFIS. She is a member of SIGMM and SIGCHI of the ACM as well as the German Informatics Society GI. She founded and directs the HCI Lab at the University of Oldenburg and OFFIS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human–computer interaction</span> Academic discipline studying the relationship between computer systems and their users

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways. A device that allows interaction between human being and a computer is known as a "Human-computer Interface (HCI)".

hitchBOT Either of two Canadian-made hitchhiking robots

hitchBOT was a Canadian hitchhiking robot created by professors David Harris Smith of McMaster University and Frauke Zeller of Toronto Metropolitan University in 2013. It gained international attention for successfully hitchhiking across Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, but in 2015 its attempt to hitchhike across the United States ended when it was stripped and decapitated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Devlin</span> Northern Irish computer scientist, AI specialist

Kate Devlin, born Adela Katharine Devlin is a Northern Irish computer scientist specialising in Artificial intelligence and Human–computer interaction (HCI). She is best known for her work on human sexuality and robotics and was co-chair of the annual Love and Sex With Robots convention in 2016 held in London and was founder of the UK's first ever sex tech hackathon held in 2016 at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London and is the author of Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots in addition to several academic papers.

Yvonne Rogers is a British psychologist and computer scientist. She serves as director of the Interaction Centre at University College London. She has authored or contributed to more than 250 publications. Her book Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction written with Jenny Preece and Helen Sharp has sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into six other languages. Her work is described in Encounters with HCI Pioneers: A Personal History and Photo Journal.

Jodi L. Forlizzi is a professor and Geschke Director, as well as an interaction designer and researcher, at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. On August 29, 2022, Forlizzi was named a Herbert A. Simon Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Her research ranges from understanding the limits of human attention to understanding how products and services evoke social behavior. Current research interests include interaction design, assistive, social, and aesthetic technology projects and systems, and notification systems. In 2014, Forlizzi was inducted into the CHI Academy for her notable works and contributions to the field of human-computer interaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelo Dalli</span>

Angelo Dalli is a computer scientist specialising in artificial intelligence, a serial entrepreneur, and business angel investor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Blandford</span> British professor

Ann Blandford FHEA is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at University College London (UCL). She serves as deputy director of the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering. Her research focuses on behaviour change, well-being, and human errors in the field of healthcare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Carpenter</span> American Researcher, Educator, Author, Speaker, Human-Robot Interaction Specialist

Julie Carpenter, born Julie Gwyn Wajdyk, is an American researcher whose work focuses on human behavior with emerging technologies, especially within vulnerable and marginalized populations. She is best known for her work in human attachment to robots and other forms of artificial intelligence.

Geraldine Fitzpatrick is an Australian professor and academic researcher who serves as the head of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at TU Wien since 2009. Her research is interdisciplinary at the intersection of social and computer sciences.

Kerstin Dautenhahn is a German computer scientist specializing in social robotics and human–robot interaction. She is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, where she holds the Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics and directs the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory.

Ana Maria Severino de Almeida e Paiva is a full professor at the University of Lisbon. Her work is around artificial intelligence and robotics. She is an elected fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Helen Hastie is the Head of the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh and a RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow. She specialises in Human-Robot Interaction and Multimodal interfaces. Hastie has undertaken projects such as AI personal assistants for remote robots, autonomous systems and spoken dialogue systems for sectors in defence and energy. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Frauke Zeller". Napier. Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  2. "Frauke Zeller". The Conversation. 2014-09-25. Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  3. "ORCID". orcid.org. Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  4. "Can you murder a robot?". BBC News. 2019-03-17. Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  5. "creative informatics data driven innovation for the creative industries". Napier. Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  6. "Frauke Zeller Research Gate". 2023-10-10.