Product development of a programmable robotic toy to stimulate interest in the fields of science and technology amongst young girls

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 45).Statistically speaking, science, technology, and engineering are male dominated fields. Peluchi is a second-generation prototype of a programmable robotic toy targeted towards young girls in hope of promoting more interest in these areas. Peluchi is an educational toy designed to both appeal to girls aesthetically and stimulate them creatively and intellectually. The toy began as a group project for a class called SP. 779: Advance Toy Product Design in the fall of 2009. It existed as a much simpler prototype with a limited set of programmable actions. Since then, the group has continued to develop beta prototype within the course of a semester under the class 2.752: Design of Mechanical Products. Additional work has been done to add complexity and allow more user customization. This is achieved through the addition of modular accessories disguising different servos and sensors that can be plugged into the base unit. The prototype itself was also refined to be more seamless and robust. Analysis and extensive design work were concentrated on the custom ports for the accessories. Finally, manufacturability and marketing strategies were then explored and future plans were considered for the toy.by My Vu.S.B

Development of the huggable social robot Probo: on the conceptual design and software architecture

This dissertation presents the development of a huggable social robot named Probo. Probo embodies a stuffed imaginary animal, providing a soft touch and a huggable appearance. Probo's purpose is to serve as a multidisciplinary research platform for human-robot interaction focused on children. In terms of a social robot, Probo is classified as a social interface supporting non-verbal communication. Probo's social skills are thereby limited to a reactive level. To close the gap with higher levels of interaction, an innovative system for shared control with a human operator is introduced. The software architecture de nes a modular structure to incorporate all systems into a single control center. This control center is accompanied with a 3D virtual model of Probo, simulating all motions of the robot and providing a visual feedback to the operator. Additionally, the model allows us to advance on user-testing and evaluation of newly designed systems. The robot reacts on basic input stimuli that it perceives during interaction. The input stimuli, that can be referred to as low-level perceptions, are derived from vision analysis, audio analysis, touch analysis and object identification. The stimuli will influence the attention and homeostatic system, used to de ne the robot's point of attention, current emotional state and corresponding facial expression. The recognition of these facial expressions has been evaluated in various user-studies. To evaluate the collaboration of the software components, a social interactive game for children, Probogotchi, has been developed. To facilitate interaction with children, Probo has an identity and corresponding history. Safety is ensured through Probo's soft embodiment and intrinsic safe actuation systems. To convey the illusion of life in a robotic creature, tools for the creation and management of motion sequences are put into the hands of the operator. All motions generated from operator triggered systems are combined with the motions originating from the autonomous reactive systems. The resulting motion is subsequently smoothened and transmitted to the actuation systems. With future applications to come, Probo is an ideal platform to create a friendly companion for hospitalised children

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

Exploring the affordances of smart toys and connected play in practice

What does children’s play look like in the smart toy era? What conceptual frameworks help make sense of the changing practices of children’s connected play worlds? Responding to these questions, this article re-frames discussions about children’s smart toy play within wider theoretical debates about the affordances of new digital materialities. To understand recent transformations of children’s play practices, we propose it is necessary to think of toys as increasingly media-like in their affordances and as connected to wider digital material ecosystems. To demonstrate the potential of this conceptual approach, we explore illustrative examples of two popular smart ‘care toys’. Our analysis identifies three examples of affordances that smart care toys share with other forms of mobile and robotic media: liveliness, affective stickiness and portability. We argue that locating discussions of smart toys within wider conceptual debates about digital materialities can provide new insights into the changing landscape of children’s play

Development of a robotic arm to teach autistic children social movements

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 14).By controlling a robotic arm, autistic children can learn the movements associated with social interactions. The goals of my invention are that autistic children would safely interact with the robotic arm and mimic the robotic arm to replicate movements associated with social interactions. The results from my Peter J. Eloranta Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship suggest that all autistic children successfully learned social movements by mimicking a robotic arm. A more effective robotic arm would better replicate human motion than currently available commercial products. Additionally, a protective sleeve that conceals wiring and joints would make this product safer for young children, the main client of the invention.by Devanie DuFour.S.B

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

Design and Evaluation of a Tangible-Mediated Robot for Kindergarten Instruction

© ACM 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACE '15 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2832952Entertainment technology increases children’s engagement in educational activities designed to develop abilities ranging from collaborative problem-solving and cognitive attention to self-esteem. However, little research has been done on designing educational and entertaining interactive technology for kindergarten children (up to 5 years old). Furthermore, most of the work in this area has considered traditional input devices such as the mouse and keyboard, which are not suitable for these very young children. More recently, other more intuitive means of interaction (touch and tangible interfaces) and advanced educational artifacts such as robots have emerged. In this work we therefore present a joint collaboration between technologists and kindergarten instructors to design and evaluate a technological platform using a mobile robot for kindergarten instruction, as well as an intuitive and user-friendly tangible user interface. The results obtained suggest the platform is not only usable by kindergarten children, but it also allows them to be fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In addition, the instructors reported that the system was well accepted and praised its versatility in use as a supporting tool for their everyday classroom activities.This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with Project TIN2014-60077-R, and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Nácher-Soler, VE.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Design and Evaluation of a Tangible-Mediated Robot for Kindergarten Instruction. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2832952SDiana Africano, Sara Berg, Kent Lindbergh, Peter Lundholm, Fredrik Nilbrink, and Anna Persson. 2004. Designing Tangible Interfaces for Children's Collaboration.CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 853--868. http://doi.org/10.1145/985921.985945Alissa N. Antle. 2013. Exploring how children use their hands to think: an embodied interactional analysis.Behaviour & Information Technology32, 9, 938--954. http://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2011.630415Jennifer Connolly, Anna Beth Doyle, and Flavia Ceschin. 1983. Forms and Functions of Social Fantasy Play in Preschoolers in M. B. InSocial and Cognitive Skills: Sex Roles and Children's Play. Academic Press, New York, 71--92.Amnon Dekel, Galit Yavne, Ela Ben-Tov, and Yulia Roschak. 2007. The spelling bee.Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, ACM, 212--215. http://doi.org/10.1145/1255047.1255092Janet A. DiPietro. 1981. Rough and tumble play: A function of gender.Developmental Psychology 17, 50--58. http://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.17.1.50Allison Druin. 2002. The role of children in the design of new technology.Behaviour & Information Technology21, 1, 1--25. http://doi.org/10.1080/01449290110108659Madhumita Ghosh and Fumihide Tanaka. 2011. The impact of different competence levels of care-receiving robot on children.IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, 2409--2415. http://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2011.6048743Juan Pablo Hourcade, Michael Crowther, and Lisa Hunt. 2007. Does mouse size affect study and evaluation results?: a study comparing preschool children's performance with small and regular-sized mice.Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, ACM, 109--116. http://doi.org/10.1145/1297277.1297300Juan Pablo Hourcade. 2007. Interaction Design and Children.Foundations and Trends in Human--Computer Interaction1, 4, 277--392. http://doi.org/10.1561/1100000006C. Lorelle Lentz, Kay Kyeong-Ju Seo, and Bridget Gruner. 2014. Revisiting the Early Use of Technology: A Critical Shift from "How Young is Too Young?" to "How Much is 'Just Right'?"Dimensions of Early Childhood42, 1, 15--23.Janet Lever. 1976. Sex Differences in the Games Children Play.Social Problems23, 4, pp. 478--487.Janet Lever. 1978. Sex Differences in the Complexity of Children's Play and Games.American Sociological Review43, 4, pp. 471--483.Susan C. Levine, Janellen Huttenlocher, Amy Taylor, and Adela Langrock. 1999. Early sex differences in spatial skill.Developmental Psychology35, 4, 940--949. http://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.35.4.940Liang-Yi Li, Chih-Wei Chang, and Gwo-Dong Chen. 2009. Researches on using robots in education.Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on E-Learning and Games, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 479--482. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03364-3_57Min Liu. 1996. An exploratory study of how pre-kindergarten children use the interactive multimedia technology: implications for multimedia software design.Journal of Computing in Childhood Education7, 1--2, 71--92.Javier Marco, Eva Cerezo, and Sandra Baldassarri. 2013. Bringing tabletop technology to all: Evaluating a tangible farm game with kindergarten and special needs children.Personal and Ubiquitous Computing17, 8, 1577--1591. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-012-0522-5Vicente Nacher, Fernando Garcia-Sanjuan, and Javier Jaen. 2015. Game Technologies for Kindergarten Instruction: Experiences and Future Challenges.Proceedings of the 2nd Congreso de la Sociedad Española para las Ciencias del Videojuego, 58--67.Vicente Nacher, Javier Jaen, and Alejandro Catala. 2014. Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children.Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces, ACM, 159--162. http://doi.org/10.1145/2669485.2669523Vicente Nacher, Javier Jaen, Elena Navarro, Alejandro Catala, and Pascual González. 2015. Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children.International Journal of Human-Computer Studies73, 37--51. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.08.004Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 2008. Flow Theory and Research. InHandbook of Positive Psychology. 195--206. http://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195187243.013.0018Junichi Osada, Shinichi Ohnaka, and Miki Sato. 2006. The scenario and design process of childcare robot, PaPeRo.Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/1178823.1178917Mildred B. Parten. 1932. Social participation among pre-school children.Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology27, 3, 243--269. http://doi.org/10.1037/h0074524Kimberly K. Powlishta, Maya G. Sen, Lisa A. Serbin, Diane Poulin-Dubois, and Julie A. Eichstedt. 2001. From infancy through middle childhood: The role of cognitive and social factors in becoming gendered. InHandbook of the psychology of women and gender, Rhoda K. Unger (ed.). John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, NJ, USA, 116--132.Kenneth H Rubin, Terrence L Maioni, and Margaret Hornung. 1976. Free play behaviors in middle- and lower-class preschoolers: Parten and Piaget Revisited.Child Development47, 2, 414--419. http://doi.org/10.2307/1128796Kenneth H. Rubin. 1977. Play Behaviors of Young Children.Young children32, 6, 16--24.Anne B. Smith and Patricia M. Inder. 1993. Social Interaction in Same and Cross Gender Preschool Peer Groups: a participant observation study.Educational Psychology 13, 29--42. http://doi.org/10.1080/0144341930130104Iris Soute and Henk Nijmeijer. 2014. An Owl in the Classroom: Development of an Interactive Storytelling Application for Preschoolers.Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interaction Design and Children, ACM, 261--264. http://doi.org/10.1145/2593968.2610467Amanda Strawhacker and Marina Umaschi Bers. 2014. "I want my robot to look for food": Comparing Kindergartner's programming comprehension using tangible, graphic, and hybrid user interfaces.International Journal of Technology and Design Education. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-014-9287-7Toshimitsu Takahashi, Masahiko Morita, and Fumihide Tanaka. 2012. Evaluation of a tricycle-style teleoperational interface for children: A comparative experiment with a video game controller.Proceedings of the 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, IEEE, 334--338. http://doi.org/10.1109/ROMAN.2012.6343775Fumihide Tanaka, Bret Fortenberry, Kazuki Aisaka, and Javier R. Movellan. 2005. Plans for Developing Real-time Dance Interaction between QRIO and Toddlers in a Classroom Environment.Procceedings on the 4th International Conference on Development and Learning, IEEE, 142--147. http://doi.org/10.1109/DEVLRN.2005.1490963Fumihide Tanaka and Shizuko Matsuzoe. 2012. Learning Verbs by Teaching a Care-Receiving Robot by Children: An Experimental Report.Proceedings of the 7th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, ACM, 253--254. http://doi.org/10.1145/2157689.2157781Fumihide Tanaka and Toshimitsu Takahashi. 2012. A tricycle-style teleoperational interface that remotely controls a robot for classroom children.Proceedings of the 7th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 255--256. http://doi.org/10.1145/2157689.2157782Barrie Thorne. 1993.Gender Play: Boys and Girls in School. Rutgers University Press.Chau Kien Tsong, Toh Seong Chong, and Zarina Samsudin. 2012. Tangible multimedia: A case study for bringing tangibility into multimedia learning.Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences64, 382--391. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.045Jie Chi Yang and Sherry Y. Chen. 2010. Effects of gender differences and spatial abilities within a digital pentominoes game.Computers & Education 55, 1220--1233. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.05.019Nicola J. Yelland. 1994. The strategies and interactions of young children in LOGO tasks.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning10, 1, 33--49. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.1994.tb00280.xEvridiki Zachopoulou, Efthimios Trevlas, and Georgia Tsikriki. 2004. Perceptions of gender differences in playful behaviour among kindergarten children.European Early Childhood Education Research Journal12, 1, 43--53. http://doi.org/10.1080/1350293048520930

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

Reference adaptation for robots in physical interactions with unknown environments

In this paper, we propose a method of reference adaptation for robots in physical interactions with unknown environments. A cost function is constructed to describe the interaction performance, which combines trajectory tracking error and interaction force between the robot and the environment. It is minimized by the proposed reference adaptation based on trajectory parametrization and iterative learning. An adaptive impedance control is developed to make the robot be governed by the target impedance model. Simulation and experiment studies are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method