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Demonstrating Virtual Teamwork with Synchrobots: A Robot-Mediated Approach to Improving Connectedness

Published: 19 April 2023 Publication History

Abstract

The increased prevalence of online collaborative work, through necessity or preference, is accompanied by measurable drops in satisfaction, creativity and energy, often termed “zoom fatigue.” As loss of physical co-presence and associated nonverbal communication are identified as contributors, we introduce Synchrobots – robots designed to channel human biophysiology for group connectedness. We propose an Interactivity demo wherein two participants perform an online problem-solving task while wearing physiological sensors and holding a Synchrobot as it physically renders a translation of their partner’s heartrate. The setup involves two stations, each with a laptop running Zoom, a set of wearable sensors recording heart rate, respiratory rate, and electrodermal activity, and a Synchrobot. After the problem-solving task, we will invite participants to reflect on how connected they felt with each other as well as their satisfaction with the collaboration quality. Participants may consent to release this data for later inclusion as part of a study.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)"I'm not alone in that battle": Designing Mobile AR for Mental Health Communication and Community ConnectednessProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661626(328-342)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI EA '23: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      April 2023
      3914 pages
      ISBN:9781450394222
      DOI:10.1145/3544549
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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      Published: 19 April 2023

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      Author Tags

      1. biosignal display
      2. physical co-presence during online collaboration
      3. robot haptic display
      4. team connectedness

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      • (2024)"I'm not alone in that battle": Designing Mobile AR for Mental Health Communication and Community ConnectednessProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661626(328-342)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024

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