Jered Vroon is a post-doctoral researcher of Social Interaction Dynamics at the Knowledge & Intelligence Design group, Delft University of Technology. He co-directs the cross-departmental Expressive Intelligence Lab. At the AMS Institute, he investigates how we can shape interactions between pedestrians and robots.
From his background in cognitive artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction, he investigates and creates the intelligence necessary for robots to engage with the social back-and-forth. His current work applies various methods from design and the performing arts to the creation of interaction dynamics for robots in a range of use-cases, from retail to last-mile delivery.
AMS provides an exciting environment to investigate these questions; a living lab environment, the mobile robot platform ‘Husky’, and active connections with the broader city of Amsterdam. Together with his students and colleagues, Jered creates prototypes within this context that help to evoke and understand the reactions of people.
“We use an amazingly rich range of behaviors when we interact with each other and robots. We tease, encour-age, run, gesture, get scared, and play. Yet, while we ourselves gracefully navigate the social dynamic by flexibly responding to social cues, our robots still strug-gle to do the same – which justly hampers their ac-ceptance in society.”
Jered Vroon
Social Interaction Dynamics
