Robot skills and cognitive performance of preschool children

Several studies have demonstrated the potential of robots as assistive tools for play activities. Through the use of robots, children with motor impairments may be able to manipulate objects and engage in play activities as their typically developing peers, thus having the same opportunities to learn cognitive, social, motor and linguistic skills. Robot use can also provide a proxy measure of disabled children's cognitive abilities by comparing their performance with that of typically developing children. This paper reports a study with eighteen typically developing children aged three, four and five years to assess at which ages the cognitive concepts of causality, negation, binary logic, and sequencing are demonstrated during Lego robot use.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Benefits of SpinBOT Playful Robotic Environment in the Development of Cognitive Abilities

[EN] Children with physical disabilities are at high risk of developing adverse effects on their cognitive development, due to their lack of ability to interact with the world around them. Multiple studies have demonstrated the potential of robots as tools used to assist playful activities, which allow the learning of cognitive, social, motor and language skills. In this area of application, this article describes a study with 4 children between 11 and 17 years of age, in order to evaluate a low-cost, technological assistance environment for the rehabilitation of the upper limb, which during the treatment with the Robot, allowed to demonstrate the cognitive concepts of causality, negation, symbolic play and sequencing. At the beginning and the end of the intervention, an evaluation was carried out by professionals in the psychology and physiotherapy area. An interview was applied to the therapists and parents or caregivers, where the progress of the cognitive component was observed through the use of the robot.[ES] Los niños que presentan discapacidad física corren un alto riesgo de desarrollar efectos adversos en su desarrollo cognitivo, debido a su incapacidad de interactuar con el medio. Múltiples estudios han demostrado el potencial de los robots como herramientas usadas para asistir actividades lúdicas, dado que, permiten el aprendizaje de habilidades cognitivas, sociales, motrices y de lenguaje. En este ámbito de aplicación, este artículo describe un estudio con 4 niños entre 11 y 17 años de edad, con el fin de evaluar un ambiente lúdico de asistencia tecnológica de bajo costo, para la rehabilitación del miembro superior, que, durante el tratamiento con el robot, permitió demostrar los conceptos cognitivos de causalidad, negación, juego simbólico y secuenciación. Al inicio y final de la intervención, se hizo una valoración por profesionales del área de psicología y fisioterapia. También, se entrevistó a los terapeutas y padres o cuidadores, donde se observó el progreso del componente cognitivo mediante el uso operativo del robot.Este trabajo ha sido hecho gracias a la Asesoría de la Asociación ABRAZAR, ubicada en Calarcá/Quindío Colombia. Agradecemos a su coordinadora Mónica Lorena Piedrahita, la terapeuta Julieth Calderón, al psicólogo Alejandro Valencia y a la trabajadora social Diana Lady Hurtado.Acevedo-Londoño, JA.; Caicedo-Bravo, E.; Ferney Castillo-García, J. (2019). Beneficios del Ambiente Robótico Lúdico SpinBOT en el Desarrollo de Habilidades Cognitivas. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática. 16(2):171-177. https://doi.org/10.4995/riai.2017.8763SWORD17117716

A Visual Language for Robot Control and Programming: A Human-Interface Study

Abstract—We describe an interaction paradigm for con-trolling a robot using hand gestures. In particular, we are interested in the control of an underwater robot by an on-site human operator. Under this context, vision-based con-trol is very attractive, and we propose a robot control and programming mechanism based on visual symbols. A human operator presents engineered visual targets to the robotic system, which recognizes and interprets them. This paper describes the approach and proposes a specific gesture language called “RoboChat”. RoboChat allows an operator to control a robot and even express complex programming concepts, using a sequence of visually presented symbols, encoded into fiducial markers. We evaluate the efficiency and robustness of this symbolic communication scheme by comparing it to traditional gesture-based interaction involving a remote human operator. I

Application of robotics rehabilitation technologies in children with upper limb disabilities

Las lesiones de miembro superior ocasionan un profundo impacto en la calidad de vida del paciente. Es bien conocido que para la recuperación del paciente, debe permitírsele jugar un papel activo en su proceso de rehabilitación. Por esta razón, las nuevas tecnologías como la robótica, se están implementando para abordar este problema; tal como lo presentan las múltiples investigaciones reportadas en la literatura. En este artículo, se documentó una revisión de la literatura sobre dispositivos y sistemas robóticos para rehabilitación del miembro superior en niños, lo que incluyó algunos que aún se encuentran en fase de desarrollo, con el fin de ofrecer un panorama global sobre los diseños y soluciones que faciliten el avance de nuevos dispositivos. Para facilidad del lector, este documento se distribuyó en marco teórico, metodología, resultados y discusión, proyecciones de la ingeniería de rehabilitación y conclusionesUpper limb injuries cause a profound impact on patient’s quality of life. It is well known that for the recovery of the patient, should be allowed to play an active role in their rehabilitation process. For this reason, new technologies such as robotics, are being implemented to address this problem; as presented by the multiple investigations reported in the literature. In this article, the review of devices and robotic systems for rehabilitation of the upper limb in children was documented, including some that are still under development, in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the designs and solutions to facilitate the development of new devices. For convenience of the reader, this document was distributed into theoretical framework, methodology, results and discussion, projections rehabilitation engineering and conclusions

Application of robotics rehabilitation technologies in children with upper limb disabilities

Las lesiones de miembro superior ocasionan un profundo impacto en la calidad de vida del paciente. Es bien conocido que para la recuperación del paciente, debe permitírsele jugar un papel activo en su proceso de rehabilitación. Por esta razón, las nuevas tecnologías como la robótica, se están implementando para abordar este problema; tal como lo presentan las múltiples investigaciones reportadas en la literatura. En este artículo, se documentó una revisión de la literatura sobre dispositivos y sistemas robóticos para rehabilitación del miembro superior en niños, lo que incluyó algunos que aún se encuentran en fase de desarrollo, con el fin de ofrecer un panorama global sobre los diseños y soluciones que faciliten el avance de nuevos dispositivos. Para facilidad del lector, este documento se distribuyó en marco teórico, metodología, resultados y discusión, proyecciones de la ingeniería de rehabilitación y conclusionesUpper limb injuries cause a profound impact on patient’s quality of life. It is well known that for the recovery of the patient, should be allowed to play an active role in their rehabilitation process. For this reason, new technologies such as robotics, are being implemented to address this problem; as presented by the multiple investigations reported in the literature. In this article, the review of devices and robotic systems for rehabilitation of the upper limb in children was documented, including some that are still under development, in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the designs and solutions to facilitate the development of new devices. For convenience of the reader, this document was distributed into theoretical framework, methodology, results and discussion, projections rehabilitation engineering and conclusions

Computational visual attention systems and their cognitive foundation: A survey

Permission to make digital/hard copy of all or part of this material without fee for personal or classroom use provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the ACM copyright/server notice, the title of the publication, and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. (c) 2010 ACMBased on concepts of the human visual system, computational visual attention systems aim to detect regions of interest in images. Psychologists, neurobiologists, and computer scientists have investigated visual attention thoroughly during the last decades and profited considerably from each other. However, the interdisciplinarity of the topic holds not only benefits but also difficulties: concepts of other fields are usually hard to access due to differences in vocabulary and lack of knowledge of the relevant literature. This paper aims to bridge this gap and bring together concepts and ideas from the different research areas. It provides an extensive survey of the grounding psychological and biological research on visual attention as well as the current state of the art of computational systems. Furthermore, it presents a broad range of applications of computational attention systems in fields like computer vision, cognitive systems and mobile robotics. We conclude with a discussion on the limitations and open questions in the field

Computational visual attention systems and their cognitive foundation: A survey

Permission to make digital/hard copy of all or part of this material without fee for personal or classroom use provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the ACM copyright/server notice, the title of the publication, and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. (c) 2010 ACMBased on concepts of the human visual system, computational visual attention systems aim to detect regions of interest in images. Psychologists, neurobiologists, and computer scientists have investigated visual attention thoroughly during the last decades and profited considerably from each other. However, the interdisciplinarity of the topic holds not only benefits but also difficulties: concepts of other fields are usually hard to access due to differences in vocabulary and lack of knowledge of the relevant literature. This paper aims to bridge this gap and bring together concepts and ideas from the different research areas. It provides an extensive survey of the grounding psychological and biological research on visual attention as well as the current state of the art of computational systems. Furthermore, it presents a broad range of applications of computational attention systems in fields like computer vision, cognitive systems and mobile robotics. We conclude with a discussion on the limitations and open questions in the field

When and How to Help: An Iterative Probabilistic Model for Learning Assistance by Demonstration

Abstract Crafting a proper assistance policy is a difficult endeavour but essential for the development of robotic assistants. Indeed, assistance is a complex issue that depends not only on the task-at-hand, but also on the state of the user, environment and competing objectives. As a way forward, this paper proposes learning the task of assistance through observation; an approach we term Learning Assistance by Demonstration (LAD). Our methodology is a subclass of Learning-by-Demonstration (LbD), yet directly addresses difficult issues associated with proper assistance such as when and how to appropriately assist. To learn assistive policies, we develop a probabilistic model that explicitly captures these elements and provide efficient, online, training methods. Experimental results on smart mobility assistance -using both simulation and a real-world smart wheelchair platform -demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach; the LAD model quickly learns when to assist (achieving an AUC score of 0.95 after only one demonstration) and improves with additional examples. Results show that this translates into better task-performance; our LAD-enabled smart wheelchair improved participant driving performance (measured in lap seconds) by 20.6s (a speedup of 137%), after a single teacher demonstration