Assistive Social Robots for People with Special needs

An increasing number of elderly people leads todemand for social robots to support health care and independentlife. An overview of various potential applications of social robotsis provided in this paper. In addition, the latest research progressin our institute is presented, i.e., multi-party interaction, gesturerecognition, affective computing, and attention capture. All theresearch and applications demonstrate that social robots are goodassistive robots for people with special needs

Sosyal hizmette füturizm: Transhümanizm, insan hayatının oyunlaştırılması, homo roboticus ve bakım

Bu çalışmada sanatsal bir akım olarak ortaya çıkıp toplumsal ve teknolojik bir boyut kazanan fütürizm hareketinin temelleri üzerinden sosyal çalışma disiplinine ve mesleğine yönelik bir değerlendirme yapılması amaçlanmaktadır. Böylece sosyal çalışma disiplininin ve mesleğinin gelecek yıllardaki olası ajandasına yönelik öngörülerin açıklanması planlanmaktadır. Bu çalışmada fütürizm ile sosyal hizmet arasındaki ilişki insan hakları, sosyal adalet, eşitlik, toplumsal refah, bireyin onuru ve saygınlığı gibi evrensel değerler üzerine kurulmuş olan sosyal hizmet uygulamalarının nasıl bir geleceğe doğru yol aldığını ortaya koyma çabasıyla kurulmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, yeni bir felsefi hareket olarak ortaya çıkan transhümanizm kavramı sosyal hizmetin geleceği ile ilgili olarak ele alınmaktadır. Daha sonra insan hayatının oyunlaştırılması, homo roboticus ve bakım gibi konular tartışılmaktadır. Bu konular son birkaç yıldır sosyal bilimlerin gündemindedir. Bu makalenin sosyal hizmet alanında bu konularla ilgili olarak hazırlanan ilk çalışmalardan biri olması nedeniyle bir başlangıç çalışması olarak kabul edilmesi ve gelecekteki çalışmalarla desteklenmesi beklenmektedir.This study aims at making an assessment of the social work discipline and profession on the basis of the futurism movement, which emerged as an artistic movement and gained social and technological dimensions. Therefore, predictions for a possible agenda of the future social work discipline and profession are discussed. In this study, the relationship between futurism and social work is established in an effort to reveal how social work practices, based on universal values such as human rights, social justice, equality, social prosperity and the dignity of the individual, are moving forward. In this context, the future of social work is discussed under the following three topics: (1) transhumanism, (2) gamification of human life, (3) homo roboticus and care. In fact, all these topics have been on the agenda of social sciences for the last few years. Despite this interest, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this article is one of the first studies on these issues in the field of social work and has raised many questions in need of further studies

The Public’s Perception of Humanlike Robots: Online Social Commentary Reflects an Appearance-Based Uncanny Valley, a General Fear of a “Technology Takeover”, and the Unabashed Sexualization of Female-Gendered Robots

Towards understanding the public’s perception of humanlike robots, we examined commentary on 24 YouTube videos depicting social robots ranging in human similarity – from Honda’s Asimo to Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Geminoids. In particular, we investigated how people have responded to the emergence of highly humanlike robots (e.g., Bina48) in contrast to those with more prototypically-“robotic” appearances (e.g., Asimo), coding the frequency at which the uncanny valley versus fears of replacement and/or a “technology takeover” arise in online discourse based on the robot’s appearance. Here we found that, consistent with Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley, people’s commentary reflected an aversion to highly humanlike robots. Correspondingly, the frequency of uncanny valley-related commentary was significantly higher in response to highly humanlike robots relative to those of more prototypical appearances. Independent of the robots’ human similarity, we further observed a moderate correlation to exist between people’s explicit fears of a “technology takeover” and their emotional responding towards robots. Finally, through the course of our investigation, we encountered a third and rather disturbing trend – namely, the unabashed sexualization of female-gendered robots. In exploring the frequency at which this sexualization manifests in the online commentary, we found it to exceed that of both the uncanny valley and fears of robot sentience/replacement combined. In sum, these findings help to shed light on the relevance of the uncanny valley “in the wild” and further, they help situate it with respect to other design challenges for HRI

Modeling and Design Analysis of Facial Expressions of Humanoid Social Robots Using Deep Learning Techniques

abstract: A lot of research can be seen in the field of social robotics that majorly concentrate on various aspects of social robots including design of mechanical parts and their move- ment, cognitive speech and face recognition capabilities. Several robots have been developed with the intention of being social, like humans, without much emphasis on how human-like they actually look, in terms of expressions and behavior. Fur- thermore, a substantial disparity can be seen in the success of results of any research involving ”humanizing” the robots’ behavior, or making it behave more human-like as opposed to research into biped movement, movement of individual body parts like arms, fingers, eyeballs, or human-like appearance itself. The research in this paper in- volves understanding why the research on facial expressions of social humanoid robots fails where it is not accepted completely in the current society owing to the uncanny valley theory. This paper identifies the problem with the current facial expression research as information retrieval problem. This paper identifies the current research method in the design of facial expressions of social robots, followed by using deep learning as similarity evaluation technique to measure the humanness of the facial ex- pressions developed from the current technique and further suggests a novel solution to the facial expression design of humanoids using deep learning.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

Human-Robot Kinaesthetic Interaction Based on Free Energy Principle

The current study investigated possible human-robot kinaesthetic interaction using a variational recurrent neural network model, called PV-RNN, which is based on the free energy principle. Our prior robotic studies using PV-RNN showed that the nature of interactions between top-down expectation and bottom-up inference is strongly affected by a parameter, called the meta-prior, which regulates the complexity term in free energy.The study also compares the counter force generated when trained transitions are induced by a human experimenter and when untrained transitions are induced. Our experimental results indicated that (1) the human experimenter needs more/less force to induce trained transitions when $w$ is set with larger/smaller values, (2) the human experimenter needs more force to act on the robot when he attempts to induce untrained as opposed to trained movement pattern transitions. Our analysis of time development of essential variables and values in PV-RNN during bodily interaction clarified the mechanism by which gaps in actional intentions between the human experimenter and the robot can be manifested as reaction forces between them.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, journal pape

O presente e o futuro da Enfermagem no Admirável Mundo Novo

The “Brave New World” envisioned a society dominated by scientific and technological progress that went as far as to subjugate and dehumanize human beings. The future foreseen in this literary work is not far from what we are currently experiencing. Thus, considering that Nursing is affected and challenged in the midst of these technological transformations, this article aims to discuss the present and future of Nursing in a society that is undergoing constant technological transformations. In the midst of a whole technological apparatus in which fundamental procedures begin to be carried out by machines, Nursing needs to begin reflecting on what would be the best posture or its differential in a world with strong technological tendencies. Future transformations are still uncertain, nonetheless they will drastically change the way individuals relate to one another and to health services. Even in the midst of these uncertainties arising from present and future technological and scientific advances, the nature of Nursing which is essentially based on human interactions, can guarantee a place of prominence for this profession in society