Research
I focus on designing clothes for robots in efforts to research human-robot interaction. I propose that robot clothing should avoid mere mimicry of human apparel, and instead be motivated by what robots need. Clothes can make a robot dynamic, personalized and adaptable, helping robots to be useful in a wider array of contexts, or to better adapt or function in the contexts they are already in. So far, I have written a paper which contributes a framework for thinking about what robots could need from clothes. In this framework, I describe functions of clothes for robots include protection from dirty or dangerous environments, signaling social role or group identity, and adaptability to any environment.
Papers
Alexandra Bremers, Maria Teresa Parreira, Xuanyu Fang, Natalie Friedman, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Alexandria Pabst, Mirjana Spasojevic, Michael Kuniavsky, and Wendy Ju. “The Bystander Affect Detection (BAD) Dataset for Failure Detection in HRI.” In 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). IEEE, 2023.
Natalie Friedman, Asmita Mehta, Kari Love, Alexandra W.D. Bremers, Awsaf Ahmed, Wendy Ju, “A utility belt for an agricultural robot: reflection-in-action for applied design research.”
Natalie Friedman, Alexandra W.D. Bremers, Bolor Amgalan, RAY LC, A.J. Parry, Kari Love, Wendy Ju, “Robot Fashion: Designing Clothes that Signal”
Natalie Friedman, Patricia L. McDermott, and Jeff Stanley. “Supporting Observability through Social Cues.” CENTRIC 2021, The Fourteenth International Conference on Advances in Human-oriented and Personalized Mechanisms, Technologies, and Services (2021): 8.
David Goedicke, Carmel Zolkov, Natalie Friedman, Talia Wise, Avi Parush, Wendy Ju, Strangers in a StrangeLand. “Strangers in a Strange Land: New Experimental System for Understanding Driving Culture using VR” In IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology Special Issue on Immersive Virtual Reality simulation for Vehicular Technology. 2022.
Natalie Friedman, Kari Love, Ray LC, Jenny Sabin, Guy Hoffman, Wendy Ju. “What Robots Need From Clothes.” In Proceedings of the 2017 conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘21), June 28-July 2, 2021, Nowhere and Everywhere, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages.
J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, David Sirkin, David Goedicke, RAY LC, Natalie Friedman, Ilan Mandel, Nikolas Martelaro, and Wendy Ju. 2021. Fake It to Make It: Exploratory Prototyping in HRI. In Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’21 Companion), March 8–11, 2021, Boulder, CO, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages.
Marcel Walch, Stacey Li, Ilan Mandel, David Goedicke, Natalie Friedman, Wendy Ju, Work In Progress: Crosswalk Cooperation: A Phone-Integrated Driver-Vehicle Cooperation Approach to Predict the Crossing Intentions of Pedestrians in Automated Driving, In Proceedings of AutomotiveUI ’20, (AutoUI’20). ACM, Virtual Event, USA.
Wendy Ju, Sharon Yavo-Ayalon, Ilan Mandel, Federico Saldarini, Natalie Friedman, Srinath Sibi, J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Jorge Ortiz. 2020. Tracking Urban Mobility and Occupancy under Social Distancing Policy. In Proceedings of the Digital Government: Research and Practice. Digit. Gov.: Res. Pract., Vol 37, No. 4,, Article 111., (August 2020), 8 pages.
Natalie Friedman. 2018. Using a Telepresence Robot to Improve Self-Efficacy of People with Developmental Disabilities. In Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’18). ACM, Galway, Ireland
Jared Duval, Zachary Rubin, Elena Márquez Segura, Natalie Friedman, Milla Zlatanov, Louise Yang, and Sri Kurniawan. 2018. SpokeIt: building a mobile speech therapy experience. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 50, 12 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3229434.3229484
Adams, D., Kurniawan, S., Herrera, C., Kang, V., & Friedman, N. 2016. Blind Photographers and VizSnap. In Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’16). Reno, Nevada, USA, doi:10.1145/2982142.2982169.
Workshops & Posters
Natalie Friedman, Kari Love, Alexandra Bremers, AJ Parry, Ray LC, Bolor Amgalan, Jen Liu, Wendy Ju. Workshop: Designing Functional Clothing for Human-robot Interaction, In Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’21 Companion), March 8–11, 2021, Boulder, CO, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages.
Natalie Friedman. Art Meets Tech Workshop Position: Robot Readability and Video Prototyping. In Proceedings of CHI ’20, (CHI ’20). ACM, New York, NY, USA
Natalie Friedman, Andrea Cuadra, Ruchi Patel, Shiri Azenkot, Joel Stein & Wendy Ju. 2019. Voice Assistant Strategies and Opportunities for People with Tetraplegia. In Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’19). ACM, Pittsburg, PA, USA
Ray LC, Natalie Friedman, J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Wendy Ju. The Forgotten In HRI Workshop Position: Agents of Spatial Influence: Designing incidental interactions with arrangements and gestures. In Proceedings of HRI ’20, (HRI ’20). ACM, New York, NY, USA
Natalie Friedman, David Goedicke, Vincent Zhang, Dmitriy Rivkin, Michael Jenkin, Ziedune Degutyte, Arlene Astell, Xue Liu, Gregory Dudek, Active Vision Human Robot Collaboration Workshop: Out of my way! Exploring Different Modalities for Robots to Ask People to Move Out of the Way, In Proceedings of RO-MANN’20, (RO-MANN’20). ACM, Virtual Event, USA. **Best Paper Award.
Natalie Friedman, David Goedicke, Vincent Zhang, Dmitriy Rivkin, Michael Jenkin, Ziedune Degutyte, Arlene Astell, Xue Liu, Gregory Dudek. Integrating Multidisciplinary Approaches to Advance Physical Human-Robot Interaction Workshop: Capturing Attention With Wind. In ICRA 2020