@article {Loewe2025,
title = {Bridging robotics/AI and real-world labs: A quantitative approach based on mining German newspaper articles},
journal = {Technology in Society},
volume = {82},
pages = {102897},
year = {2025},
issn = {0160-791X},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.102897},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X25000879},
author = {Martha Loewe and Ingrid Ott},
keywords = {Real-world lab, Regulatory sandbox, Smart regulation, Service robotics, Media analysis, Structural topic modeling},
abstract = {Both, robotics/AI (RAI) and real-world labs (RWLs), are current topics in public innovation promotion policies, but are mostly treated in isolation. While RAI has a focus on a specific technology to serve society, RWLs address the institutional context including experimental learning of governments and societal perspectives. We are particularly interested in the interface between RAI and RWLs and the way media are reporting on these two domains. This reflects key aspects of the social debate in relation to RAI and RWLs. We base our analysis on the understanding that technology development and diffusion ultimately depend on institutional arrangements that are developed alongside or in lieu of market arrangements and also reflect societal needs. This paper uses quantitative text analysis to examine 3,800 German broadsheet newspaper articles in the period 2016–2023. We use Structural Topic Modeling (STM) with publication date and sub-corpus source as covariates to trace topic dynamics and topical prevalence contrast. We show that the dominant topic has changed over time from RAI (“Machine Learning and AI Development Methods”) to RWL (“Real-World Labs for the Energy Transition”). We identify bridge topics and argue that these are diverse and include philosophical and legal considerations, public funding and specific application areas for robots, e.g. in schools. As indicators to identify the interface between the two domains (RAI, RWL), we propose a combination of topical prevalence contrast and eigenvector centrality and the use of psycholinguistic attributes to evaluate the topics. These elements could be broadly used to exploit possible complementarities for government experimental learning and when designing “smart regulation” which targets several fields simultaneously.}
}

@INPROCEEDINGS {Arlt2025,
author = {Niklas Arlt and Fabian Reister and Christian Dreher and Tamim Asfour},
title = {A Humanoid Robot Asks Humans for Help to Navigate Elevators},
booktitle = {IEEE/RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)},
pages = {0--0},
year = {2025}
}

@inproceedings{Azarfar2025,
    title = {Designing {Robot}-{Mediated} {Phonological} {Awareness} {Activities}: {Child}-centered {Approach} and {Kindergarten} {Integration}},
    author = {Azarfar, Jasmin and Norman, Utku and Rudenko, Irina and Bruno, Barbara},
    booktitle = {34th {IEEE} {International} {Conference} on {Robot} and {Human} {Interactive} {Communication} ({RO}-{MAN})},
    year = {2025},
    abstract = {Long-term child-robot interaction (CRI) in kindergartens is key for integrating robots into children's daily lives and supporting their development. This unsupervised 4-weeks study explores how the robot Pepper can support phonological awareness (PA) in kindergarten children through the 'Sound Game', leveraging robot logs, questionnaires and open feedback by teachers and experts' analysis of audio recordings. Our findings reveal a generally high engagement, with the game being played 12 times, for a total of 233 minutes. Teachers played a crucial role in mediating the game, especially for younger children, and noted its potential for long-term use. The game proved beneficial across age groups, highlighting its potential as a first step for sustained, effective PA development and the transformative impact of social robots in early childhood education.},
    doi = {10.5445/IR/1000183767},
}

BibTeX:
@INPROCEEDINGS {Baermann2025,
author = {Leonard B\"armann and Chad DeChant and Joana Plewnia and Fabian Peller-Konrad and Daniel Bauer and Tamim Asfour and Alex Waibel},
title = {Episodic Memory Verbalization using Hierarchical Representations of Life-Long Robot Experience},
booktitle = {IEEE/RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)},
pages = {0--0},
year = {2025}
}

@inproceedings{reiter_artificial_2025,
    title = {Artificial {Moral} {Agents}: {Should} {Machines} {Take} {Ethical} {Responsibility}?},
    author = {Reiter, Patrick and Norman, Utku and Weinberger, Nora and Bruno, Barbara},
    booktitle = {2025 {IEEE} {International} {Conference} on {Advanced} {Robotics} and {Its} {Social} {Impacts} ({ARSO}), {Osaka}, 17th-19th {July} 2025},
    year = {2025},
    abstract = {Robots and AI systems are increasingly being developed for and deployed in contexts where decision-making entails moral implications. Examples include autonomous vehicles navigating the ethical dilemmas of traffic, healthcare robots tasked with ensuring patient safety and well-being, assistive robots upholding the autonomy and dignity of the elderly and people with disabilities, and social robots guiding children through educational experiences while assisting their emotional and cognitive development. The transition from passive tools to autonomous entities with moral decision-making capabilities has ignited extensive debate about the ethical responsibilities of Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs). This paper synthesizes recent advancements in AMA research, addressing evolving debates on their ethical feasibility and societal integration. We assess key arguments against and for AMAs, highlighting impacts on moral responsibility, cultural perspectives, and stakeholder trust. Our analysis reveals that while AMAs remain a subject of theoretical debate, their integration into ethically sensitive contexts is increasingly proposed, necessitating clearer governance strategies. Given the recent AI advancements and increased deployment of robotics in high-stakes settings, this synthesis is timely and highlights the urgency of addressing these ethical challenges. By analyzing recent advancements and diverse perspectives, we aim to provide a concise but comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in empowering machines with moral decision-making capabilities.},
    doi = {10.1109/ARSO64737.2025.11124921},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{Baermann2024,
@ARTICLE {Baermann2024,
author = {Leonard B\"armann and Rainer Kartmann and Fabian Peller-Konrad and Jan Niehues and Alex Waibel and Tamim Asfour},
title = {Incremental learning of humanoid robot behavior from natural interaction and large language models},
pages = {1--14},
volume ={11},
number ={},
journal ={Frontiers in Robotics and AI},
year = {2024}
}

@article{Loewe2024,
    title={Bridging Robotics/Ai and Real-World Labs: A Quantitative Approach Based on Mining German Newspaper Articles},
    author={Loewe, Martha and Ott, Ingrid},
    doi={10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.102897}
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{Amann2024,
author={Amann, Robin and Li, Zhaolin and Bruno, Barbara and Niehues, Jan},
booktitle={2024 IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop (SLT)},
title={Augmenting Automatic Speech Recognition Models With Disfluency Detection},
year={2024},
volume={},
number={},
pages={224-231},
keywords={Accuracy;Conferences;Pipelines;Prediction algorithms;Inference algorithms;Classification algorithms;Standards;Automatic speech recognition;Automatic speech recognition;speech disfluency;forced alignment}
}

@INPROCEEDINGS {Plewnia2024,
    author = {Joana Plewnia and Fabian Peller-Konrad and Tamim Asfour},
    title = {Forgetting in Episodic Long-Term Memory of Humanoid Robots},
    booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
    pages = {6711--6717},
    year = {2024}
}

@INPROCEEDINGS {Rudenko2024,
    title = {Drawings for insight on preschoolers’ perception of robots},
    author = {Rudenko, Irina and Norman, Utku and Maure, Romain and Rudenko, Andrey and Weinberger, Nora
    and Krebs, Franziska and Peller-Konrad, Fabian and Reister, Fabian and Asfour, Tamim and Bruno, Barbara},
    booktitle = hri24,
    year = {2024},
    numpages = {5},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/3610978.3640608}
}

@INPROCEEDINGS {Younes2024,
    author = {Abdelrahman Younes and Tamim Asfour},
    title = {KITchen: A Real-World Benchmark and Dataset for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Kitchen Environments},
    booktitle = {IEEE/RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)},
    pages = {0--0},
    year = {2024}
}

@inproceedings{Hilgert2024,
    title = "Evaluating and Training Long-Context Large Language Models for
            Question Answering on Scientific Papers",
    author = "Hilgert, Lukas  and Liu, Danni  and Niehues, Jan",
    editor = "Kumar, Sachin and Balachandran, Vidhisha  and Park, Chan Young  and Shi, Weijia
             and Hayati, Shirley Anugrah  and Tsvetkov, Yulia  and Smith, Noah  and Hajishirzi, Hannaneh
             and Kang, Dongyeop  and Jurgens, David",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Customizable NLP: Progress and Challenges
                in Customizing NLP for a Domain, Application, Group, or Individual (CustomNLP4U)",
    month = nov,
    year = "2024",
    address = "Miami, Florida, USA",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.customnlp4u-1.17",
    doi = "10.18653/v1/2024.customnlp4u-1.17",
    pages = "220--236"
}

@inproceedings{Weinberger2024,
    author = {Weinberger, Nora and Gerling, Kathrin and Rixen, Jan Ole and Bruno, Barbara},
    year = {2024},
    title = {Trust “in the field”: reflections on a real-world lab deploying social robots in childcare settings},
    eventtitle = {33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication},
    eventtitleaddon = {ROMAN 2024},
    eventdate = {2024-08-26/2024-08-30},
    venue = {Pasadena, CA, USA},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the SCRITA 2024 Workshop on Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in
                Human-Robot Interaction at IEEE RO-MAN 2024, 26th-30th August 2024, Pasadena, Ca.},
    publisher = {{CEUR-WS.org}},
    note = {46.24.01; LK 01},
    keywords = {Child-Robot Interaction, Field Research, Trust},
    language = {english}
}

@article{Peller2023,
    title = {A memory system of a robot cognitive architecture and its implementation in ArmarX},
    author = {Fabian Peller-Konrad and Rainer Kartmann and Christian R.G. Dreher and Andre Meixner and
             Fabian Reister and Markus Grotz and Tamim Asfour},
    journal = {Robotics and Autonomous Systems},
    pages = {104415},
    numpages = {20},
    volume = {164},
    year = {2023},
    issn = {0921-8890},
    doi = {10.1016/j.robot.2023.104415},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2023.104415},
    keywords = {Humanoid robotics, Memory-driven cognitive architecture, Working memory, Episodic memory,
                Long-term memory, Knowledge representation}
}

@InProceedings{Krebs2023,
    Title = {Making AI Tangible for Children through Humanoid Robots},
    Author = {Krebs, Franziska and Peller-Konrad, Fabian and Younes, Abdelrahman and Reister, Fabian and
             Bärmann, Leonard and Vetter, Pascal and Weinberger, Nora and
    Loewe, Martha and Ott, Ingrid and Nierling, Linda and Asfour, Tamim and Bruno, Barbara},
    Booktitle = cri,
    Year = {2023}
}

@inproceedings{Baermann2023a,
    title={Incremental Learning of Humanoid Robot Behavior from Natural Interaction and Large Language Models},
    author={Leonard B{\"a}rmann and Rainer Kartmann and Fabian Peller-Konrad and Alex Waibel and Tamim Asfour},
    booktitle={2nd Workshop on Language and Robot Learning: Language as Grounding},
    year={2023},
    url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=v2buYLflQA}
}

@inproceedings{Baermann2023b,
title={Multimodal Error Correction with Natural Language and Pointing Gestures},
author={Stefan Constantin, Fevziye Irem Eyiokur, Dogucan Yaman, Leonard B{\ä}rmann and Alex Waibel},
booktitle={Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) Workshops, 2023, pp. 1976-1986},
year={2023},
url={https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/ICCV2023W/ACVR/html/Constantin_Multimodal_Error_Correction_with_Natural_Language_and_Pointing_Gestures_ICCVW_2023_paper.html}
}

@misc{Gerling2023,
    author = "Gerling, Kathrin and Vinel, Alexey and Müller, Karin and Nierling, Linda and
             Stiefelhagen, Rainer and Karmann, Caroline and Lang, Daniel and Asfour, Tamim",
    title = "Technology-Centric Real-World Labs: Challenges and Opportunities for a New Mode of
            Participatory Research From the Perspective of Computer Science",
    booktitle = "Mensch und Computer 2023 - Workshopband",
    year = 2023,
    publisher = "GI",
    series = Mensch und Computer,
    doi = "https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/42057",
    url = "https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/42057"
}

@misc{NierlingWeinbergerVetter2023,
    author = {Nierling, Linda and Weinberger, Nora and Vetter, Pascal and Maia, Maria João and Asfour, Tamim and
             Krebs, Franziska and Peller-Konrad, Fabian and Reister, Fabian and Younes, Abdelrahman and Bärmann, Leonard and Loewe, Martha},
    year = {2023},
    title = {Holding the Tension between Technological Pathways and Societal Needs :
            A critical Reflection on a Technology Oriented Real-World Lab},
    howpublished = {Vortrag gehalten auf 21st Annual STS Conference : Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies (2023),
                Graz, Österreich, 8.--10. Mai 2023},
    note = {46.24.01; LK 01},
    language = {english}
}

@misc{NierlingMaiaWeinberger2022,
    author = {Nierling, Linda and Maia, Maria João and Weinberger, Nora and Vetter, Pascal and
             Lahn, Nadine and Asfour, Tamim and Krebs, Franziska and Peller-Konrad, Fabian and Reister, Fabian},
    year = {2022},
    title = {Real world Lab “Robotic Artificial Intelligence” -
            Experience artificial intelligence through humanoid robots},
    howpublished = {Poster präsentiert auf Cultures of Artificial Intelligence -
                   New Perspectives for Museums (2022), Online, 1.--2. Dezember 2022},
    note = {46.24.01; LK 01},
    language = {english}
}