Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

The Impact of Education on Fear of Falling in Elderly Women

Context: More than one third of individuals 65 and older fall each year. Approximately 85% of these falls occur in the homes of independent older adults. Falls can lead to an increased fear of falling, defined as a pervasive concern that a fall may occur. Fear of falling can decrease quality of life due to a lower sense of well-being, limiting mobility, and reduction of social interaction. Reduction in activity can result in a sedentary lifestyle and poor balance which increases the risk of falling. Fifty percent of women 75 years and older participate in no physical activity beyond activities of daily living. Older women, on average, participate in half the amount of moderate and vigorous activity as young women. Activity and education based programs have been shown to increase balance confidence in all participants independent of the program they participated in.The aim of the intervention utilized in this study was to decrease fear of falling in elderly women and improve their overall quality of life. Objective: The purpose of the study was to determine how an educational intervention that utilized balance training and home safety assessment would impact fear of falling in elderly women at different activity levels based on the results from activPAL technology. Setting: All subject were tested at Butterfield Trail Village in Fayetteville, AR for all assessments. Participants: Eight older women; 3 in the high activity group, 2 in the moderate activity group, and 3 in the low activity group. The mean age was 79.1 years, the mean height was 161.7 cm, and the mean weight was 61.1 kg. Methods: The participants were recruited from Butterfield Trail senior living community. The participants were given a health history questionnaire and informed consent. The pre-assessment given was the Falls Efficacy Scale- International (FES-I) to determine the participants’ fear of falling. activPAL monitors were given to each participant to wear for 7 days to determine activity level. A one-on-one education session was conducted with each participant after activity assessment. A post FES-I assessment was given after completion of the education session. Main Outcome Measures: A dependent t-test was conducted to compare pre and post FES-I scores. Differences between groups (group x time) were assessed using a repeated measures ANOVA. Statistical significance was set at α = .05. Correlational analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between fear of falling and activity level Results: Statistical significance was not found in any of the outcome measures. Mean FES-I scores dependent t-test: pre 25.5 + 5.9, post 30.5 + 7.2, mean difference -1.9, p-value .58. Repeated measures ANOVA: low activity pre 27.7 + 3.5 post 32.3 + 8.1, moderate activity pre 31.0 + 1.4 post 33.5 + 6.4, high activity pre 19.0 + 3.0 post 26.7 + 7.6. Correlational analysis: a moderate correlation (-.63) was found between activity level and fear of falling. Conclusion: The education intervention utilized in this study that used a variety of materials and techniques was not effective in reducing fear of falling in elderly women across all activity levels

Musical Robots For Children With ASD Using A Client-Server Architecture

Presented at the 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2016)People with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions, which affects their social integration. Leveraging the recent advances in interactive robot and music therapy approaches, and integrating both, we have designed musical robots that can facilitate social and emotional interactions of children with ASD. Robots communicate with children with ASD while detecting their emotional states and physical activities and then, make real-time sonification based on the interaction data. Given that we envision the use of multiple robots with children, we have adopted a client-server architecture. Each robot and sensing device plays a role as a terminal, while the sonification server processes all the data and generates harmonized sonification. After describing our goals for the use of sonification, we detail the system architecture and on-going research scenarios. We believe that the present paper offers a new perspective on the sonification application for assistive technologies

Therapeutic and educational objectives in robot assisted play for children with autism

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/ROMAN.2009.5326251This article is a methodological paper that describes the therapeutic and educational objectives that were identified during the design process of a robot aimed at robot assisted play. The work described in this paper is part of the IROMEC project (Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions) that recognizes the important role of play in child development and targets children who are prevented from or inhibited in playing. The project investigates the role of an interactive, autonomous robotic toy in therapy and education for children with special needs. This paper specifically addresses the therapeutic and educational objectives related to children with autism. In recent years, robots have already been used to teach basic social interaction skills to children with autism. The added value of the IROMEC robot is that play scenarios have been developed taking children's specific strengths and needs into consideration and covering a wide range of objectives in children's development areas (sensory, communicational and interaction, motor, cognitive and social and emotional). The paper describes children's developmental areas and illustrates how different experiences and interactions with the IROMEC robot are designed to target objectives in these areas

Therapeutic and educational objectives in robot assisted play for children with autism

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/ROMAN.2009.5326251This article is a methodological paper that describes the therapeutic and educational objectives that were identified during the design process of a robot aimed at robot assisted play. The work described in this paper is part of the IROMEC project (Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions) that recognizes the important role of play in child development and targets children who are prevented from or inhibited in playing. The project investigates the role of an interactive, autonomous robotic toy in therapy and education for children with special needs. This paper specifically addresses the therapeutic and educational objectives related to children with autism. In recent years, robots have already been used to teach basic social interaction skills to children with autism. The added value of the IROMEC robot is that play scenarios have been developed taking children's specific strengths and needs into consideration and covering a wide range of objectives in children's development areas (sensory, communicational and interaction, motor, cognitive and social and emotional). The paper describes children's developmental areas and illustrates how different experiences and interactions with the IROMEC robot are designed to target objectives in these areas.Final Published versio

Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

© 2013 Farshid Amirabdollahian et al., licensee Versita Sp. z o. o. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developmentsPeer reviewe