Social robots (personal robots) emphasize individualized social interaction and communication with people. To maximize communication capacity of a personal robot, designers make it more anthropomorphic (or zoomorphic), and ...

Much of the recent interest in virtual worlds has focused on using the immersive properties of virtual worlds to recreate an experience like that of interacting face to face with other participants. This thesis instead ...

Shape-shifting materials have been part of sci-fi literature for decades. But if tomorrow we invent them, how are we going to communicate to them what shape we want them to morph into? If we look at our history, for thousands ...

Transients occur in human walking during a transition to, from, and between steady state walking and act as an impulse destabilizing an otherwise normal gait cycle. Turns and accelerated starts are all common transients ...