Calming Effects of Touch in Human, Animal, and Robotic Interaction—Scientific State-of-the-Art and Technical Advances

Small everyday gestures such as a tap on the shoulder can affect the way humans feel and act. Touch can have a calming effect and alter the way stress is handled, thereby promoting mental and physical health. Due to current technical advances and the growing role of intelligent robots in households and healthcare, recent research also addressed the potential of robotic touch for stress reduction. In addition, touch by non-human agents such as animals or inanimate objects may have a calming effect. This conceptual article will review a selection of the most relevant studies reporting the physiological, hormonal, neural, and subjective effects of touch on stress, arousal, and negative affect. Robotic systems capable of non-social touch will be assessed together with control strategies and sensor technologies. Parallels and differences of human-to-human touch and human-to-non-human touch will be discussed. We propose that, under appropriate conditions, touch can act as (social) signal for safety, even when the interaction partner is an animal or a machine. We will also outline potential directions for future research and clinical relevance. Thereby, this review can provide a foundation for further investigations into the beneficial contribution of touch by different agents to regulate negative affect and arousal in humans

Affordable Compact Humanoid Robot for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism is a disorder that primarily affects the development of social and communication skills. Interacting with simple humanoid robots has been shown to improve the communication skills of autistic children. Currently, no robots capable of meeting these requirements are both low-cost and available for in-home use. This project produced a design and prototype of a humanoid robot that is non-threatening, affordable, portable, durable, and capable of interaction, and the electronic and control software were developed. This robot has the ability to track the child with its 3-DoF eyes and 3-DoF head, open and close its 1-DoF beak and 1-DoF each eyelids, and raise its 1-DoF each wings. These attributes will give it the ability to be used for therapy and assessment of children with autism

Puppets between human, animal and machine: towards the modes of movement contesting the anthropocentric view of life in animation

In this PhD thesis, I challenge animation studies’ conventional notion that animation can bring something inanimate to “life”. This emphasis on animation’s capacity to make a figure appear to move on screen has led to the problematic notion that movement has a synonymous relationship with life. Contesting these discourses, I show in this thesis that not every animated figure suggests the impression of life. In order to prove this, I put forward as a critical focus the puppet-as-puppet figure, that is, the figure of a puppet depicted as a puppet per se in the film diegesis, which problematises the impression of life even if appearing to move on screen. A related focus in my thesis is the mode of movement which functions as a visual and physical parameter in order to analyse what an animated (or static) figure is intended to look like, instead of reducing it to a question of life. Through case studies of these puppet-as-puppet figures, which I classify into four groups, I examine the varying ways in which they are depicted as inanimate or sub/nonhuman, even when in human form, in contrast to human or (anthropomorphic) animal figures, both in terms of their mode of movement as well as their appearance. Examining how these depictions demonstrate anthropocentric views of puppets, I consider religio-philosophical, scientific and aesthetic discourses on puppets and human/animal simulacra. Further, I explore a selection of puppet-as-puppet figures as alternatives to these anthropocentric conventions, examining their defamiliarisation of the animating human subject’s mastery over the animated non/subhuman object, and the non-anthropocentric sensations which their movements arouse on screen in the relationship between humanity and materiality

Developmental Bootstrapping of AIs

Although some current AIs surpass human abilities in closed artificial worlds such as board games, their abilities in the real world are limited. They make strange mistakes and do not notice them. They cannot be instructed easily, fail to use common sense, and lack curiosity. They do not make good collaborators. Mainstream approaches for creating AIs are the traditional manually-constructed symbolic AI approach and generative and deep learning AI approaches including large language models (LLMs). These systems are not well suited for creating robust and trustworthy AIs. Although it is outside of the mainstream, the developmental bootstrapping approach has more potential. In developmental bootstrapping, AIs develop competences like human children do. They start with innate competences. They interact with the environment and learn from their interactions. They incrementally extend their innate competences with self-developed competences. They interact and learn from people and establish perceptual, cognitive, and common grounding. They acquire the competences they need through bootstrapping. However, developmental robotics has not yet produced AIs with robust adult-level competences. Projects have typically stopped at the Toddler Barrier corresponding to human infant development at about two years of age, before their speech is fluent. They also do not bridge the Reading Barrier, to skillfully and skeptically draw on the socially developed information resources that power current LLMs. The next competences in human cognitive development involve intrinsic motivation, imitation learning, imagination, coordination, and communication. This position paper lays out the logic, prospects, gaps, and challenges for extending the practice of developmental bootstrapping to acquire further competences and create robust, resilient, and human-compatible AIs.Comment: 102 pages, 29 figure

Construction of an emotionally reactive toy

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-95).The Affective Tigger is a toy that responds to the user or playmate in a natural and emotive manner. Specifically, the Affective Tigger recognizes and reacts to the emotion the child is exhibiting. For example, when the child is 'happily' playing with the Affective Tigger, she might move and hold him in a manner that expresses this happiness: she might bounce him along the floor, or hug and kiss him. The Affective Tigger senses this physical interaction, for example he might recognize that the child is bouncing him, and outwardly expresses his own happiness in turn. In this manner, the Affective Tigger is both mimicking the mood expressed by the child and reacting to a behavior exhibited by the child, namely bouncing him. The Affective Tigger was evaluated by assessing the appropriateness of his responses to the child. In twelve play sessions, children were invited into the MIT Media Laboratory to play with the Affective Tigger. The results from these trials illustrated that three year olds are just beginning to recognize emotions in others, four year olds are in the process of discovering an awareness of 'other', and five year old children are well on their way to developing empathy and other advanced emotional responses. It was also shown that a simple sensor-based behavior system such as the one in the Affective Tigger is sufficient to produce the compelling 'appearance' that the Affective Tigger has feelings of his own. The big question, however, remains unanswered, could a child learn, from repeated exposure playing with the Affective Tigger, to recognize feelings and to respond appropriately to them?by Dana Kirsch.S.M

Do Elders Dream of Electric Seals? : A SCOT analysis of the mental commitment robot PARO in elderly care

This study is a contribution to the public debate about demographic challenges caused by an increasing elderly population and lack of professional care to support them. The Norwegian Technology Board has given some advice towards a future health care for elders, among them supporting the implementation of robot technologies. One robot that is in use already at Norwegian elderly care centres is a social robot shaped as a seal puppy with thick white fur and big black eyes; the mental commitment robot PARO. Especially elderly demented people are said to calm down and become more socialised if the robot is present. The thesis sets out to investigate how the mental commitment robot PARO has been interpreted and adapted by different groups at residential and treatment centres for people with dementia; which ethical aspects emerge when a robot like PARO is introduced or evaluated in elderly care; and finally how does the introduction of PARO in elderly care influence care practises and knowledge? The descriptive framework, Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), by Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch is the main theory in use to answer these questions. The thesis analyses how relevant social groups form and interpret the technology, demonstrating the interpretative flexibility of the robot. This flexibility comes from social negotiations among the members of different social groups, more than technical properties of the artefact. The empirical material was collected through semi structured interviews of sixteen respondents working at dementia care centres, distributors, and governmental advisory organisations. The study is approved by the National Data Protection Official for Research (NSD), given the project number 24540. NSD has demanded that sites and people described in this study are kept anonymous; protecting the vulnerable group of demented elders. The SCOT analysis has revealed that the robot is interpreted in a wide range of different ways. Major solutions the robot fulfils are that it calm down elders, it increases social contact and is a new distraction that makes the caregivers more observant towards the elders, enabling the carer to see the elder in a new way. Major issues with the robot are that it is highly expensive equipment, stigmatising in some situations and creates a risk of deception due to its animal characteristics. The thesis concludes that a traditional caring paradigm competes with a new robot care paradigm. However, the caregiver and the social factors are crucial elements to why the robot works so well at some places, while not working in other situations. Key words: Social robots, PARO, SCOT, Dementia, Elderly car

Sensor.IO

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2021The Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living (AACIL), an organization led by people with disabilities to empower the lives of people with disabilities, wants an electronic input/output device that gives a unique sensory experience for their members. The device must map user inputs to outputs, enabling users with varying levels of ability to interact with the device and giving them autonomy in the final output of the device. This need was identified by our three primary stakeholders: Sean Ahlquist (A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Professor), Claire Moore (AACIL’s Visual Arts teacher), and an AACIL Visual Arts participant. Through an ideation phase, screening using requirements and specifications, and evaluation using a Pugh chart, we selected our final design: an input/output device that manipulates a textile to alter the projections of lights shining through the textile. Based on a theoretical model of the system, experiments to characterize the interaction between lights and textiles, and preliminary electrical analysis, we created a detailed CAD model. We then moved into manufacturing, ordering purchased components, and assembly. We conducted extensive user testing and verification of our requirements and specifications. The team verified 8 of our 10 requirements, including our user engagement and accessibility requirements. Some of our requirements were not met due to time and budget limitations, including durability and safety labeling. Overall, the device achieved its purpose of providing an accessible, interactive, engaging input/output device for self-expression.Sean Ahlquist; Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living: UM Architecturehttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167649/1/Team_34-SensorIO.pd

The power of affective touch within social robotics

There have been many leaps and bounds within social robotics, especially within human-robot interaction and how to make it a more meaningful relationship. This is traditionally accomplished through communicating via vision and sound. It has been shown that humans naturally seek interaction through touch yet the implications on emotions is unknown both in human-human interaction and social human-robot interaction. This thesis unpacks the social robotics community and the research undertaken to show a significant gap in the use of touch as a form of communication. The meaning behind touch will be investigated and what implication it has on emotions. A simplistic prototype was developed focusing on texture and breathing. This was used to carry out experiments to find out which combination of texture and movement felt natural. This proved to be a combination of synthetic fur and 14 breaths per minute. For human’s touch is said to be the most natural way of communicating emotions, this is the first step in achieving successful human-robot interaction in a more natural human-like way

TofuDraw : choreographing robot behavior through Digital Painting

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-99).In this document, TofuDraw is introduced as an expressive robotic character with interfaces that enable children to choreograph robotic behaviors through controlling both physical motion and form. Unique to the TofuDraw system is the presented "Digital Painting" interface, which enables children to choreograph the motion and form of an expressive robot through coloring a digitally projected surface using the affordances of painting. Additional interfaces are also presented, which enable children to control the robotic character in a realtime fashion using more traditional video game inspired control. Using these interfaces, the TofuDraw system intends to animate expressive robotic characters serving as transitional objects that allow children to explore a ́microworld where theater is the primary language. Evaluations of the TofuDraw system with children ages 3-8 suggest that children can incorporate the presented expressive robotic characters into their fantasy play patterns and control the expressive robot's behavior through numerous control interfaces designed to choreograph both form and motion.Ryan Mark Wistort.S.M