Development of an Android System Integrated with Sensor Networks

Non

Characteristics of interactive communication between Pepper robot, patients with schizophrenia, and healthy persons

Background: Expressing enjoyment when conversing with healthcare robots is an opportunity to enhance the value of human robots with interactive capabilities. In clinical practice, it is common to find verbal dysfunctions in patients with schizophrenia. Thus, interactive communication characteristics may vary between Pepper robot, persons with schizophrenia, and healthy persons. Objective: Two case studies aimed to describe the characteristics of interactive communications, 1) between Pepper as a healthcare robot and two patients with schizophrenia, and 2) between Pepper as a healthcare robot and two healthy persons. Case Report: The “Intentional Observational Clinical Research Design” was used to collect data. Using audio-video technology, the conversational interactions between the four participants with the Pepper healthcare robot were recorded. Their interactions were observed, with significant events noted. After their interactions, the four participants were interviewed regarding their experience and impressions of interacting with the Pepper healthcare robot. Audio-video recordings were analyzed following the analysis and interpretation protocol, and the interview data were transcribed, analyzed, and interpreted. Discussion: There were similarities and differences in the interactive communication characteristics between the Pepper robot and the two participants with schizophrenia and between Pepper and the two healthy participants. The similarities were experiences of human enjoyment while interacting with the Pepper robot. This enjoyment was enhanced with the expectancy of the Pepper robot as able to entertain, and possessing interactive capabilities, indicating two-way conversational abilities. However, different communicating characteristics were found between the healthy participants’ impressions of the Pepper robot and the participants with schizophrenia. Healthy participants understood Pepper to be an automaton, with responses to questions often constrained and, on many occasions, displaying inaccurate gaze. Conclusion: Pepper robot showed capabilities for effective communication pertaining to expressing enjoyment. The accuracy and appropriateness of gaze remained a critical characteristic regardless of the situation or occasion with interactions between persons with schizophrenia, and between healthy persons. It is important to consider that in the future, for effective use of healthcare robots with multiple users, improvements in the areas of the appropriateness of gaze, response time during the conversation, and entertaining functions are critically observed

Robotics 2010

Without a doubt, robotics has made an incredible progress over the last decades. The vision of developing, designing and creating technical systems that help humans to achieve hard and complex tasks, has intelligently led to an incredible variety of solutions. There are barely technical fields that could exhibit more interdisciplinary interconnections like robotics. This fact is generated by highly complex challenges imposed by robotic systems, especially the requirement on intelligent and autonomous operation. This book tries to give an insight into the evolutionary process that takes place in robotics. It provides articles covering a wide range of this exciting area. The progress of technical challenges and concepts may illuminate the relationship between developments that seem to be completely different at first sight. The robotics remains an exciting scientific and engineering field. The community looks optimistically ahead and also looks forward for the future challenges and new development

FollowThem: aplicação móvel para monitorizar crianças e idosos

Currently, there is a growing interest in developing mobile applications in an attempt to overcome loneliness, especially on the senior age group. This interest also extends to children monitoring. In this context, a mobile application developed for the Android operating system, designated FollowThem, is presented. Besides the mobile application, two other components were developed: a caregiver area and an information area. This mobile application is designed to monitor and assist elderly and children, in order to allow them to feel safer, while simultaneously providing support to their caregivers. FollowThem has an intuitive interface and offers useful features to their users, such as detecting their geographical position, proximity and falls, among other features not less important, that will be described throughout the work. The main difference between FollowThem and other applications residing on the market of mobile applications is the meeting of various dispersed functionalities as well as the introduction of several innovative functionalities. This work is guided mostly to describe the mobile application since this is the main contribution of this work. Its most important functionalities are described. The following components are also presented: a caregiver area, which is designed to provide give support to caregivers; and an information area, which is designed to clarify in what the system consists.Atualmente verifica-se um interesse crescente no desenvolvimento de aplicações móveis numa tentativa de contornar a solidão existente na faixa etária sénior. Este interesse estendese, igualmente, aos pais na educação dos seus filhos, no que concerne aos cuidados de vigilância que estas aplicações poderão permitir prestar. Neste contexto, é apresentada uma aplicação móvel desenvolvida para o sistema operativo Android, designada FollowThem. Além da aplicação móvel foram desenvolvidos dois outros componentes: área de cuidador e uma área informativa. A presente aplicação móvel tem como objetivo monitorizar e ajudar idosos e crianças, de forma a se sentirem mais seguros e, simultaneamente dar apoio aos seus cuidadores. FollowThem tem uma interface intuitiva e oferece funcionalidades úteis para os seus utilizadores como detetar a sua posição geográfica, proximidade e quedas, entre outras funcionalidades não menos importantes, referidas ao longo deste trabalho. A principal diferença entre a aplicação FollowThem e as restantes aplicações, residentes no mercado de aplicações móveis, é a reunião de diversas funcionalidades atualmente dispersas por várias aplicações, como também a introdução de funções inovadoras. Este trabalho de mestrado orienta-se, maioritariamente, para a aplicação móvel, uma vez que esta é a principal contribuição. São descritas as suas funcionalidades mais relevantes, sendo, também, apresentados os seguintes componentes: área de cuidador, desenvolvida para dar apoio aos cuidadores, e a área informativa, desenvolvida para esclarecer, de uma forma geral, em que consiste o sistema