Getting healthier : creating interactive cooking tools for kids

Cooking lessons are believed to be the basis for a healthy lifestyle for both children and adults. However, while children learn their eating habits during childhood, most people only learn to cook from the age of sixteen onwards. Therefore, it is suggested that people should learn to cook during childhood. Current cooking classes aim mainly at the cognitive skills, with children learning about food in a traditional setting, i.e. in class and from books. Children are taught that water boils at a hundred degrees Celsius by using numbers and visualizations of thermometers, instead of what boiling water looks like. This way of teaching contrasts very much with the rich sensorial experience that cooking actually is. Therefore, we argue that learning about cooking should be aimed more at exploiting the perceptual-emotional skills. In the current paper we present the design and development of an interactive learning environment that teaches children how to prepare healthy meals. The project was developed by means of a process referred to as research through design, i.e. by iteratively ideating concepts, making prototypes and evaluating them in context. A key element of this project is the facilitation of learning by doing in the interactive learning environment. It is argued that performing an action is a more effective way of learning than learning on a cognitive level. In addition, principles from tangible interaction have been integrated in the design. Tangible interfaces are believed to engage multiple senses, support natural learning and create playfulness. The Supersous Game supports an interactive feedback loop with five different cooking tools; a knife, a peeler, a masher, a scale and a rasp. The game guides the children through the process of cooking by auditory guides and visual explanations. Various prototype iterations have been evaluated on interaction and experience at an after school day care centre with children in the age group of 7 to 11 years. The experiential results, which were obtained by means of semi-structured interviews, suggest that after playing the game the children have a more positive attitude towards cooking. In addition, children have greater confidence in their ability to cook and have a better understanding of how they can eat healthier. Furthermore, all children indicated that they wanted to play the game more often, and some even mentioned that they would like to involve their parents in the process of cooking as well. Moreover, parents were surprised by the cooking skills of their children, as well as of their willingness to try out new self-prepared dishes. Finally, the evaluation of the interaction suggests possible improvements to the environment such as applying inherent feedback and personalization of guidance. The presented project suggests that interactive games may support a healthier lifestyle for children and that interactive learning environments could offer new opportunities for health promotion programs

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

Attractive, Informative, and Communicative Robot System on Guide Plate as an Attendant with Awareness of User’s Gaze

In this paper, we introduce an interactive guide plate system by adopting a gaze-communicative stuffed-toy robot and a gaze-interactive display board. An attached stuffed-toy robot on the system naturally show anthropomorphic guidance corresponding to the user’s gaze orientation. The guidance is presented through gaze-communicative behaviors of the stuffed-toy robot using joint attention and eye-contact reactions to virtually express its own mind in conjunction with b) vocal guidance and c) projection on the guide plate. We adopted our image-based remote gaze-tracking method to detect the user’s gazing orientation. The results from both empirical studies by subjective / objective evaluations and observations of our demonstration experiments in a semipublic space show i) the total operation of the system, ii) the elicitation of user’s interest by gaze behaviors of the robot, and iii) the effectiveness of the gaze-communicative guide adopting the anthropomorphic robot

Freeform User Interfaces for Graphical Computing

報告番号: 甲15222 ; 学位授与年月日: 2000-03-29 ; 学位の種別: 課程博士 ; 学位の種類: 博士(工学) ; 学位記番号: 博工第4717号 ; 研究科・専攻: 工学系研究科情報工学専

Living with Drones, Robots, and Young Children: Informing Research through Design with Autoethnography

Supporting the study of child-drone interaction in domestic spaces is a difficult endeavour, but of value to the development of this robotic platform. This paper presents an autoethnographic study, serving as an exploratory first-person method to surface issues and opportunities in this design space. Autoethnography is increasingly popular in HCI, but to further support its application, I combine it with a Sociotechnical Systems (StS) perspective, informing the analysis and development of descriptive narratives with systems theory. This paper is based on a year-long documentation of the interaction between my family and a set of three land robots and one flying robot. I present work in the form of critical incidents and lessons learned, and a set of design opportunities for child-drone interaction to inform a research through design probe development. The combination between StS and autoethnography proved fruitful in understanding how drones may currently be brought or gifted into the home without fully considering the effects and implications of their use. Furthermore, I offer reflections on the use of autoethnography for other researchers when living and involving their family with their research material