The perception of aging populations is a major factor driving the social robot development movement. A growing body of research reflects the expanding interest in social robots. This paper synthesizes research on the development of social robots with a literature review of academic articles with publication dates ranging from 2006 to 2017. The review is divided into three themes: (a) robots as an aid in treatment; (b) robots as social assistants and home companions; and (c) robots as custodial caregivers that are viewed in terms of ethical implications. This paper outlines the issues surrounding social, commitment, assistive, and companion robots for use in medical treatment, mental health therapy, physiotherapy, care facilities, and private homes. It describes some of the ethical concerns raised by researchers and media, including questions of control, privacy, consent, and the issue of simulated versus human compassion in caregiving. The research also points out that a rhetoric of urgency concerning aging populations drives the development of robots, which frames citizens who will benefit from robots in reductive ways. We argue that the contribution of humanities and social science research, including age studies and critical gerontology, should be better integrated with discourses of social robot development, largely from technical fields.

Cultural heritage artifacts connect us to past generations and provide links to previous worlds that are beyond our reach. We developed TombSeer, an augmented reality application that aims to immerse the wearer in a museum space engaging two senses (seeing and gesturing) through a holographic heads-up interface that brings virtual, historical artifacts "back to life" through gestural interactivity. This article introduces the TombSeer software prototype and highlights the application of embodied interaction to museum visits using an emerging hardware platform for 3D interactive holographic images (e.g., Meta head-mounted display). This article discusses the TombSeer prototype's development and functionality testing with the Tomb of Kitines exhibit, which was conducted at The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. TombSeer's embodied gestural and visual augmented reality experience functions to aesthetically enhance museum exhibits, cultural heritage sites, and galleries.CCS Concepts: r Human-centered computing → Mixed/augmented reality; r Hardware → Analysis and design of emerging devices and systems Additional

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CoverL Division has developed a new, high-power lO0-fs laser to study solid-density plasmas. A colliding-pulse mode-locked (CPM) dye laser is used to generate tile initial laser pulses. The photograph shows the saturable absorber dye jet that modelocks the laser to provide pulsed operation from a continuous-wave pumped laser cavity. The saturable absorber consists of a 30-to 50-1_m-thick jet of DODCI dye dissolved i,, ethylene glycol. The solution is pumped through the nozzle at the top of the photograph and collected in the funnel at the bottom. The jet is enclosed by two concave mirrors, forming a subresonator that focuses the intercavity beam on the jet. Shown is tile 620-nra wavelength intercavity beam of the CPM laser. This beam is then anlplified in a series of dye and titanium sapphire amplifiers to produce 100-fs pulses with 1 J of energy.