Using real-time recognition of human-robot interaction styles for creating adaptive robot behaviour in robot-assisted play

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/ALIFE.2009.4937693This paper presents an application of the Cascaded Information Bottleneck Method for real-time recognition of Human-Robot Interaction styles in robot-assisted play. This method, that we have developed, is implemented here for an adaptive robot that can recognize and adapt to children's play styles in real time. The robot rewards well-balanced interaction styles and encourages children to engage in the interaction. The potential impact of such an adaptive robot in robot-assisted play for children with autism is evaluated through a study conducted with seven children with autism in a school. A statistical analysis of the results shows the positive impact of such an adaptive robot on the children's play styles and on their engagement in the interaction with the robot

Towards socially adaptive robots : A novel method for real time recognition of human-robot interaction styles

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/ICHR.2008.4756004Automatically detecting different styles of play in human-robot interaction is a key challenge towards adaptive robots, i.e. robots that are able to regulate the interactions and adapt to different interaction styles of the robot users. In this paper we present a novel algorithm for pattern recognition in human-robot interaction, the Cascaded Information Bottleneck Method. We apply it to real-time autonomous recognition of human-robot interaction styles. This method uses an information theoretic approach and enables to progressively extract relevant information from time series. It relies on a cascade of bottlenecks, the bottlenecks being trained one after the other according to the existing Agglomerative Information Bottleneck Algorithm. We show that a structure for the bottleneck states along the cascade emerges and we introduce a measure to extrapolate unseen data. We apply this method to real-time recognition of Human-Robot Interaction Styles by a robot in a detailed case study. The algorithm has been implemented for real interactions between humans and a real robot. We demonstrate that the algorithm, which is designed to operate real time, is capable of classifying interaction styles, with a good accuracy and a very acceptable delay. Our future work will evaluate this method in scenarios on robot-assisted therapy for children with autism.Peer reviewe

Influence of Reaction Time in the Emotional Response of a Companion Robot to a Child's Aggressive Interaction

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Developing Kaspar: a humanoid robot for children with Autism

In the late 1990s using robotic technology to assist children with Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASD) emerged as a potentially useful area of research. Since then the field of assistive robotics for children with ASD has grown considerably with many academics trialling different robots and approaches. One such robot is the humanoid robot Kaspar that was originally developed in 2005 and has continually been built upon since, taking advantage of technological developments along the way. A key principle in the development of Kaspar since its creation has been to ensure that all of the advances to the platform are driven by the requirements of the users. In this paper we discuss the development of Kaspar’s design and explain the rationale behind each change to the platform. Designing and building a humanoid robot to interact with and help children with ASD is a multidisciplinary challenge that requires knowledge of the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), Child–Robot Interaction (CRI) and knowledge of ASD. The Kaspar robot has benefited from the wealth of knowledge accrued over years of experience in robot-assisted therapy for children with ASD. By showing the journey of how the Kaspar robot has developed we aim to assist others in the field develop such technologies further

Affective robotics for socio-emotional development in children with autism spectrum disorders

Tese de doutoramento do Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Eletrónica e de ComputadoresAutism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of complex developmental disorders of the brain. Individuals affected by this disorder are characterized by repetitive patterns of behaviour, restricted activities or interests, and impairments in social communication. The use of robots had already been proven to encourage the promotion of social interaction and skills lacking in children with ASD. The main goal of this thesis is to study the influence of humanoid robots to develop socio-emotional skills in children with ASD. The investigation demonstrates the potential benefits a robotic tool provides to attract the attention of children with ASD, and therefore use that focus to develop further skills. The main focus of this thesis is divided into three topics. The first topic concerns the use of a robot to encourage learning appropriate physical social engagement, and to facilitate the ability to acquire knowledge about human body parts. The results show that the robot proved to be a useful tool, attracting the children’s attention and improving their knowledge about human body parts. The second topic regards the process of designing game scenarios to be used with children with ASD, targeting the promotion of emotion recognition skills. Three game scenarios were developed based on the expertise of professionals and they were successfully tested in pilot studies. Finally, the last topic presents two child-robot interaction studies with a large sample. They examine the use of a humanoid robot as a tool to teach recognition and labelling of emotions. The first study focuses on verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviours as measures to evaluate the social interaction and children interacting with the robot displayed more non-verbal behaviours indicating social engagement. The second study analyses the children’s attention patterns, and the children’s performance in the game scenarios previously designed. Along the sessions, the children increased their eye contact with the experimenter and in the study comparing the use of the robot with a traditional intervention, children who performed the game scenarios with the robot and the experimenter had a significantly better performance than the children who performed the game scenarios without the robot. The main conclusions of this research support that a humanoid robot is a useful tool to develop socio-emotional skills in the intervention of children with ASD, due to the engagement and positive learning outcome observed.As Perturbações do Espectro do Autismo (PEA) são um distúrbio complexo do desenvolvimento do cérebro. Os indivíduos afetados por esse transtorno são caracterizados por padrões repetitivos do comportamento, atividades ou interesses restritos e dificuldades na comunicação social. A utilização de robôs já provou ser um estímulo promovendo a interação social e competências em falta nestes indivíduos. O objetivo principal desta tese é estudar a influência de robôs humanoides para desenvolver competências sócio emocionais em crianças com PEA. A investigação demonstra os potenciais benefícios de uma ferramenta robótica para atrair a atenção de crianças com PEA e utilizar esta atenção para desenvolver outras competências. O foco principal desta tese está dividido em três tópicos. O primeiro tópico consiste na utilização de um robô para incentivar a aprendizagem sobre a interação físico-social apropriada e para facilitar a aquisição de conhecimento sobre partes do corpo. Os resultados mostram que o robô provou ser uma ferramenta útil, atraindo a atenção das crianças e melhorando o seu conhecimento sobre partes do corpo. A segunda parte refere-se ao processo de construção de atividades para serem utilizadas com crianças com PEA, promovendo competências de reconhecimento de emoções. Três atividades foram desenvolvidas com base na opinião de profissionais e foram testadas em estudo piloto com sucesso. Finalmente, o último tópico apresenta dois estudos de interação criança-robô examinando a utilização de um robô humanoide como ferramenta para ensinar reconhecimento e identificação de emoções. O primeiro estudo foca a comunicação verbal e não-verbal como medidas de avaliação da interação social e as crianças que interagiram com o robô mostraram mais comportamentos não-verbais que indicam interação social. O segundo estudo analisa os padrões de atenção e o desempenho das crianças nas atividades concebidas anteriormente. Ao longo das sessões, as crianças aumentaram o contacto ocular com o experimentador e no estudo que comparou a utilização do robô com intervenção tradicional, as crianças que realizaram as atividades com o robô e o experimentador tiveram um desempenho significativamente melhor do que as crianças que realizaram as ativdades sem o robô. As conclusões principais desta investigação suportam que um robô humanoide foi uma ferramenta útil para desenvolver competências sócio emocionais na intervenção de crianças com PEA, devido à interação e resultados positivos de aprendizagem observados.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) in the scope of the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0319/2014.This work was performed in part under the R&D project RIPD/ADA/109407/2009.SFRH/BD/71600/2010 scholarship

Affective Communication for Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Research on affective communication for socially assistive robots has been conducted to enable physical robots to perceive, express, and respond emotionally. However, the use of affective computing in social robots has been limited, especially when social robots are designed for children, and especially those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social robots are based on cognitiveaffective models, which allow them to communicate with people following social behaviors and rules. However, interactions between a child and a robot may change or be different compared to those with an adult or when the child has an emotional deficit. In this study, we systematically reviewed studies related to computational models of emotions for children with ASD. We used the Scopus, WoS, Springer, and IEEE-Xplore databases to answer different research questions related to the definition, interaction, and design of computational models supported by theoretical psychology approaches from 1997 to 2021. Our review found 46 articles; not all the studies considered children or those with ASD.This research was funded by VRIEA-PUCV, grant number 039.358/202