The Iterative Development of the Humanoid Robot Kaspar: An Assistive Robot for Children with Autism

This paper gives an overview of the design and development of the humanoid robot Kaspar. Since the first Kaspar robot was developed in 2005, the robotic platform has undergone continuous development driven by the needs of users and technological advancements enabling the integration of new features. We discuss in detail the iterative development of Kaspar’s design and clearly explain the rational of each development, which has been based on the user requirements as well as our years of experience in robot assisted therapy for children with autism, particularly focusing on how the developments benefit the children we work with. Further to this, we discuss the role and benefits of robotic autonomy on both children and therapist along with the progress that we have made on the Kaspar robot’s autonomy towards achieving a semi-autonomous child-robot interaction in a real world setting.Peer reviewe

Research on the Certifi cate accommodation scheme of “Industrial Robot Vision and Sensing Technology” under the “1+X” certifi cate system

In the exploration of “1+X” certificate system under the professional course of industrial robot technology certificate accommodation scheme, analyze the connotation of “1+X” certifi cate system, Aiming at the problems existing in the school, such as the mismatch between the professional courses of industrial robot technology and the vocational skill level certificate of “Industrial Robot Application Programming”, the low integration between the course content and the vocational skill level standard, and the lagging construction of professional teaching resource base, taking the course of “Industrial Robot Vision and Sensing Technology” as an example, According to the teaching practice, a professional course system matching the vocational skill level standard should be constructed, a diversifi ed and integrated teaching resource library should be created to realize the integration of courses and certifi cates, and the “1+X” certifi cate system should be integrated into the whole process of talent training

Developmental Robots - A New Paradigm

It has been proved to be extremely challenging for humans to program a robot to such a sufficient degree that it acts properly in a typical unknown human environment. This is especially true for a humanoid robot due to the very large number of redundant degrees of freedom and a large number of sensors that are required for a humanoid to work safely and effectively in the human environment. How can we address this fundamental problem? Motivated by human mental development from infancy to adulthood, we present a theory, an architecture, and some experimental results showing how to enable a robot to develop its mind automatically, through online, real time interactions with its environment. Humans mentally “raise” the robot through “robot sitting” and “robot schools” instead of task-specific robot programming

Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems

As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions of choreography become central to their design, placement, and application. With a human viewer or counterpart present, a system will automatically be interpreted within context, style of movement, and form factor by human beings as animate elements of their environment. The interpretation by this human counterpart is critical to the success of the system's integration: knobs on the system need to make sense to a human counterpart; an artificial agent should have a way of notifying a human counterpart of a change in system state, possibly through motion profiles; and the motion of a human counterpart may have important contextual clues for task completion. Thus, professional choreographers, dance practitioners, and movement analysts are critical to research in robotics. They have design methods for movement that align with human audience perception, can identify simplified features of movement for human-robot interaction goals, and have detailed knowledge of the capacity of human movement. This article provides approaches employed by one research lab, specific impacts on technical and artistic projects within, and principles that may guide future such work. The background section reports on choreography, somatic perspectives, improvisation, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, and robotics. From this context methods including embodied exercises, writing prompts, and community building activities have been developed to facilitate interdisciplinary research. The results of this work is presented as an overview of a smattering of projects in areas like high-level motion planning, software development for rapid prototyping of movement, artistic output, and user studies that help understand how people interpret movement. Finally, guiding principles for other groups to adopt are posited.Comment: Under review at MDPI Arts Special Issue "The Machine as Artist (for the 21st Century)" http://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/Machine_Artis

Integrating mobile robotics and vision with undergraduate computer science

This paper describes the integration of robotics education into an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. The proposed approach delivers mobile robotics as well as covering the closely related field of Computer Vision, and is directly linked to the research conducted at the authors’ institution. The paper describes the most relevant details of the module content and assessment strategy, paying particular attention to the practical sessions using Rovio mobile robots. The specific choices are discussed that were made with regard to the mobile platform, software libraries and lab environment. The paper also presents a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of student results, including the correlation between student engagement and performance, and discusses the outcomes of this experience

A proposed framework of an interactive semi-virtual environment for enhanced education of children with autism spectrum disorders

Education of people with special needs has recently been considered as a key element in the field of medical education. Recent development in the area of information and communication technologies may enable development of collaborative interactive environments which facilitate early stage education and provide specialists with robust tools indicating the person's autism spectrum disorder level. Towards the goal of establishing an enhanced learning environment for children with autism this paper attempts to provide a framework of a semi-controlled real-world environment used for the daily education of an autistic person according to the scenarios selected by the specialists. The proposed framework employs both real-world objects and virtual environments equipped with humanoids able to provide emotional feedback and to demonstrate empathy. Potential examples and usage scenarios for such environments are also described