OPAL - School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The OPAL project is a collaboration between engineering, computer science, psychology, interaction design, and robotics with the aim of building social robots for studying human-robot interaction, communication and social engagement.

The project is funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), a research centre that aims to investigate all aspects of language.

The project was inspired by the RUBI project at UCSD and early prototypes were given the name "Opie".

Robots

Opie
RUBI
Ngukurr Language Centre Language Robot – a collaboration with the Ngukurr Language Centre
Glossing Project
Animettes

Dr Scott Heath at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

Carlos Ramirez at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

David Ferris at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

Publications

Heath, S., Durantin, G., Boden, M., Hensby, K., Taufatofua, J., Olsson, O., ... & Wiles, J. (2017). Spatiotemporal Aspects of Engagement during Dialogic Storytelling Child–Robot Interaction. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4, 27. Read full article.
Worthy, P., Boden, M., Karimi, A., Weigel, J., Matthews, B., Hensby, K., ... & Viller, S. (2015). Children's Expectations and Strategies in Interacting with a Wizard of Oz Robot. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction (pp. 608-612). ACM. Read full article.
Wiles, J. et al (2016). Social Cardboard: Pretotyping a social ethnodroid in the wild. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. ACM/IEEE. Read full article.
Hensby, K. et al (2016). Hand in hand: Tools and techniques for understanding children's touch with a social robot. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. ACM/IEEE. Read full article.
Rogers, K. et al (2016). Discovering Patterns of Touch: A Case Study for Visualization-Driven Analysis in Human-Robot Interaction In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. ACM/IEEE. Read full article.
Heath, S. et al (2016). Lingodroids: Investigating grounded color relations using a social robot for children. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. ACM/IEEE. Read full article.