Personal Reflection

Enrichment of HRI knowledge and experience 🤖💙🧑🏻‍🦳

Starting my Computer Science Master's last September, I passionately explored my interests in interaction between people and tech, namely HCI and HRI, starting with the courses Social Signal Processing and Conversational Agents. In pursuit of that direction, I took on the challenge of this project with great eagerness. This course proved to be an enrichment and broadening of the things that interest me.

I look back at this project with a great satisfaction. The result is a collaborative effort in which I applied my skills and enriched my knowledge within this great team. Kickstarting the project, there was an initial discussion on expectations: a meeting in which each their personal forte's and pitfalls were clarified to the team. I knew my strengths lie in critical reading and writing since I practised that a lot of times during my Bachelor's in Chinese Studies. It was immensely beneficial to see such a diverse skillset in this group and I can proudly say that the result reflects that collaboration.

My contributions were focused on my experience in previous courses, focusing on ethical HRI and the evaluation of HRI systems. I held the written documentation in check at times when inconsistencies were present, always referring to the relevant literature on the topics being discussed. Additionally, I found that my conceptualisation skills were helpful in the kick-off phase of our project. I follow extracurricular electives at the Design faculty where we infuse AI with meaningful interactive prototypes.