Activity recognition in a Physical Interactive RoboGame

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of human physical activity recognition in a robot game scenario. Being able to recognize types of activity is essential to enable robot behavior adaptation to support player engagement. Also, the introduction of this recognition system will allow for development of better models for prediction, planning and problem solving in PIRGs that can foster human-robot interaction. The experiments reported on this paper were performed on data collected from real in-game activity, where a human player faces a mobile robot. We use a custom single tri-axial accelerometer module attached to the player’s chest in order to capture motion information. The main characteristic of our approach is the extraction of features from patterns found on the motion variance rather than on raw data. Furthermore, we allow for the recognition of unconstrained motion given that we do not ask the players to perform target activities before hand: all detectable activities are derived from the free player motion during the game itself. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to consider activity recognition in a physical interactive robogame

Physically Interactive Robogames: Definition and Design Guidelines

There is evidence that people expects to be able to play games with autonomous robots, so that robogames could be one of the next killer ap- plications for Robotics. Physically Interactive RoboGames (PIRG) is a new application field where autonomous robots are involved in games requiring physical interaction with people. Since research in this field is moving its first steps, definitions and design guidelines are still largely missing. n this paper, a definition for PIRG is proposed, together with guidelines for their design. Physically Interactive, Competitive RoboGames (PICoRG) are also introduced. They are a particular kind of PIRG where human players are involved in a challenging, highly interactive and competitive game activity with autonomous robots. The development process of a PICoRG, Jedi Trainer , is presented to show a practical application of the proposed guidelines. The game has been successfully played in different unstructured environments, by general public; feedback is reported and analysed

Learning and Mining Player Motion Profiles in Physically Interactive Robogames

Physically-Interactive RoboGames (PIRG) are an emerging application whose aim is to develop robotic agents able to interact and engage humans in a game situation. In this framework, learning a model of players’ activity is relevant both to understand their engagement, as well as to understand specific strategies they adopted, which in turn can foster game adaptation. Following such directions and given the lack of quantitative methods for player modeling in PIRG, we propose a methodology for representing players as a mixture of existing player’s types uncovered from data. This is done by dealing both with the intrinsic uncertainty associated with the setting and with the agent necessity to act in real time to support the game interaction. Our methodology first focuses on encoding time series data generated from player-robot interaction into images, in particular Gramian angular field images, to represent continuous data. To these, we apply latent Dirichlet allocation to summarize the player’s motion style as a probabilistic mixture of different styles discovered from data. This approach has been tested in a dataset collected from a real, physical robot game, where activity patterns are extracted by using a custom three-axis accelerometer sensor module. The obtained results suggest that the proposed system is able to provide a robust description for the player interaction

Timing Issues in Physically Interacting RoboGames

In Physically Interactive RoboGames (PIRG) human players interact with autonomous robots in a game context, where all have to move to play their respective roles. As in regular children games and in videogames, timing plays a fundamental role both for the performance in the game, and for the relationship that is established among players. In this paper, some experiences about designing timing aspects in different PIRGs are reported, and it is put in evidence when timing is critical and its design needs special care. Timing aspects are described and discussed

Influence of Reaction Time in the Emotional Response of a Companion Robot to a Child's Aggressive Interaction

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Can my robotic home cleaner be happy? Issues about emotional expression in non-bio-inspired robots.

In many robotic applications a robot body should have a functional shape that cannot include bio-inspired elements, but it would still be important that the robot can express emotions, moods, or a character, to make it acceptable, and to involve its users. Dynamic signals from movement can be exploited to provide this expression, while the robot is acting to perform its task. A research effort has been started to find general emotion expression models for actions that could be applied to any kind of robot to obtain believable and easily detectable emotional expressions. On his path, the need for a unified representation of emotional expression emerged. A framework to define action characteristics that could be used to represent emotions is proposed in this paper. Guidelines are provided to identify quantitative models and numerical values for parameters, which can be used to design and engineer emotional robot actions. A set of robots having different shapes, movement possibilities, and goals have been implemented following these guidelines. Thanks to the proposed framework, different models to implement emotional expression could now be compared in a sound way. The question mentioned in the title can now be answered in a justified way

Computer Game Scenario Representation: A Systematic Mapping Study

Background: Game scenario is an important factor for achieving player enjoyment; consisting a key business success factor. Additionally, the production of early design artifacts is crucial for the success of the development process. However, representing scenarios is a non-trivial task: (a) multiple aspects of the game need to be visualized; and (b) there is a plethora of representation approaches, out of which the game designer needs to select from. Aim: The goal of this work is to provide a panorama of the current scenario representation approaches, to aid game engineers in selecting the most fitting scenario representation approach and understand the existing designing options. Method: We have performed a Systematic Mapping Study, using 4 digital libraries, since the main goal can be achieved through study classification. By following an established search and filtering process, we have identified 717 articles, and analyzed in detail 95. Results: Diagrams are the most common generic approach to represent scenario; Game story is the most usual part of the scenario being represented; Characters are the most common component; and Transitions are the most usual connectors. Conclusion: Researchers may get useful information for empirically investigating several game engineering aspects; whereas game engineers can efficiently select the most fitting approach

Safe and Adaptive Social Robots for Children with Autism

Social robots are being considered to be a part of the therapy for children with autism due to the reported efficacy such technology in improving the outcomes. How ever, children diagnosed with autism exhibit challenging behaviors that could cause harm to themselves and to others around them. Throwing, hitting, kicking, and self harming are some examples of the challenging behaviors that were reported to occur among this population. The occurrence of such behaviors during the presence of a social robot could raise some safety concerns. For this reason, this research attempts toidentify the potential for harm due to the diffusion of social robots and investigate means to mitigate them. Considering the advancement in technology and the progress made in many computer science disciplines are making small and adaptable social robots a foreseeable possibility, the studies presented here focus on small robotic form factors.The first study quantities the potential harm to the head due to one of the identi?ed risky scenarios that might occur between a child and a social robot. The results re leaved that the overall harm levels based on the selected severity indices are relatively low compared to their respective thresholds. However, the investigation of harm due to throwing of a small social robot to the head revealed that it could potentially causet issue injuries, sub-concussive or even concussive events in extreme cases. The second two studies are aimed to make small robots safer by optimizing their design. Hence,studies are conducted investigating how robot design can be made safer by investigating different design factors. The study investigated the in?uence of the mass and shape on the linear acceleration of a developed dummy head. The results revealed that the two design factors considered (i.e. mass and shape) affected the resultant response. The second study investigated the in offence three different soft material sonthesa meresponse. The endings showed that the control factors considered are not statistically significant in attenuating the response. Finally, the last two studies attempt to make small robots more adaptable to promote safer interactions. This is carried out by em bedding the recognition of unwanted physical interactions into companion robot with the appropriate timing of responses. The findings of the first study highlight the pos sibility of characterizing children's negative interactions with robotic toys relying on accelerometer sensor. The second study showed that producing a late response to an action (i.e. greater than 1.0 s) could negatively affect the children's comprehension of the intended message. The work presented in this dissertation is multidisciplinary that involves the field of Mechanical Engineering and Information Technology