7,340 research outputs found
Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people
This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of
elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly
people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new
applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses
the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and
users for which service robots are and are not suitable
What could assistance robots learn from assistance dogs?
These studies are part of our broader project that aims at
revealing relevant aspects of human-dog interactions, which could help
to develop and test robot social behaviour. We suggest that the cooperation
between assistance dogs and their disabled owners could serve as a model to
design successful assistance robot–human interactions.
In Study 1, we analysed the behaviour of 32 assistance dog–owner dyads
performing a fetch and carry task. In addition to important typical behaviours
(attracting attention, eye-contact, comprehending pointing gestures), we found
differences depending on how experienced the dyad was and whether the owner
used a wheel chair or not.
In Study 2 we investigated the reactions of a subsample of dogs to unforeseen
difficulties during a retrieving task. We revealed different types of
communicative and displacement behaviours, and importantly, dogs showed a
strong commitment to execute the insoluble task or at least their behaviours lent
a “busy” appearance to them, which can attenuate the owners’ disappointment.
We suggest that assistant robots should communicate their inability to solve a
problem using simple behaviours (non-verbal vocalisation, orientation
alternation), and/or could show displacement behaviours rather than simply not
performing the task.
In sum, we propose that assistant dogs’ communicative behaviours and problem
solving strategies could inspire the development of the relevant functions and
social behaviours of assistance robots
Conjunctive Visual and Auditory Development via Real-Time Dialogue
Human developmental learning is capable of
dealing with the dynamic visual world, speech-based
dialogue, and their complex real-time association.
However, the architecture that realizes
this for robotic cognitive development has
not been reported in the past. This paper takes
up this challenge. The proposed architecture does
not require a strict coupling between visual and
auditory stimuli. Two major operations contribute
to the “abstraction” process: multiscale temporal
priming and high-dimensional numeric abstraction
through internal responses with reduced variance.
As a basic principle of developmental learning,
the programmer does not know the nature
of the world events at the time of programming
and, thus, hand-designed task-specific representation
is not possible. We successfully tested the
architecture on the SAIL robot under an unprecedented
challenging multimodal interaction mode:
use real-time speech dialogue as a teaching source
for simultaneous and incremental visual learning
and language acquisition, while the robot is viewing
a dynamic world that contains a rotating object
to which the dialogue is referring
Assistance dogs provide a useful behavioural model to enrich communicative skills of assistance robots
These studies are part of a project aiming to reveal relevant aspects of human–dog interactions, which could serve as a model to design successful human-robot interactions. Presently there are no successfully commercialized assistance robots, however, assistance dogs work efficiently as partners for persons with disabilities. In Study 1, we analyzed the cooperation of 32 assistance dog–owner dyads performing a carrying task. We revealed typical behavior sequences and also differences depending on the dyads' experiences and on whether the owner was a wheelchair user. In Study 2, we investigated dogs' responses to unforeseen difficulties during a retrieving task in two contexts. Dogs displayed specific communicative and displacement behaviors, and a strong commitment to execute the insoluble task. Questionnaire data from Study 3 confirmed that these behaviors could successfully attenuate owners' disappointment. Although owners anticipated the technical competence of future assistance robots to be moderate/high, they could not imagine robots as emotional companions, which negatively affected their acceptance ratings of future robotic assistants. We propose that assistance dogs' cooperative behaviors and problem solving strategies should inspire the development of the relevant functions and social behaviors of assistance robots with limited manual and verbal skills
Averting Robot Eyes
Home robots will cause privacy harms. At the same time, they can provide beneficial services—as long as consumers trust them. This Essay evaluates potential technological solutions that could help home robots keep their promises, avert their eyes, and otherwise mitigate privacy harms. Our goals are to inform regulators of robot-related privacy harms and the available technological tools for mitigating them, and to spur technologists to employ existing tools and develop new ones by articulating principles for avoiding privacy harms.
We posit that home robots will raise privacy problems of three basic types: (1) data privacy problems; (2) boundary management problems; and (3) social/relational problems. Technological design can ward off, if not fully prevent, a number of these harms. We propose five principles for home robots and privacy design: data minimization, purpose specifications, use limitations, honest anthropomorphism, and dynamic feedback and participation. We review current research into privacy-sensitive robotics, evaluating what technological solutions are feasible and where the harder problems lie. We close by contemplating legal frameworks that might encourage the implementation of such design, while also recognizing the potential costs of regulation at these early stages of the technology
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