Artificial Vision Algorithms for Socially Assistive Robot Applications: A Review of the Literature

Today, computer vision algorithms are very important for different fields and applications, such as closed-circuit television security, health status monitoring, and recognizing a specific person or object and robotics. Regarding this topic, the present paper deals with a recent review of the literature on computer vision algorithms (recognition and tracking of faces, bodies, and objects) oriented towards socially assistive robot applications. The performance, frames per second (FPS) processing speed, and hardware implemented to run the algorithms are highlighted by comparing the available solutions. Moreover, this paper provides general information for researchers interested in knowing which vision algorithms are available, enabling them to select the one that is most suitable to include in their robotic system applicationsBeca Conacyt Doctorado No de CVU: 64683

INNOVATING CONTROL AND EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVE MODALITIES OF USER INTERFACES FOR PEOPLE WITH LOCKED-IN SYNDROME

Patients with Lock-In-Syndrome (LIS) lost their ability to control any body part beside their eyes. Current solutions mainly use eye-tracking cameras to track patients' gaze as system input. However, despite the fact that interface design greatly impacts user experience, only a few guidelines have been were proposed so far to insure an easy, quick, fluid and non-tiresome computer system for these patients. On the other hand, the emergence of dedicated computer software has been greatly increasing the patients' capabilities, but there is still a great need for improvements as existing systems still present low usability and limited capabilities. Most interfaces designed for LIS patients aim at providing internet browsing or communication abilities. State of the art augmentative and alternative communication systems mainly focus on sentences communication without considering the need for emotional expression inextricable from human communication. This thesis aims at exploring new system control and expressive modalities for people with LIS. Firstly, existing gaze-based web-browsing interfaces were investigated. Page analysis and high mental workload appeared as recurring issues with common systems. To address this issue, a novel user interface was designed and evaluated against a commercial system. The results suggested that it is easier to learn and to use, quicker, more satisfying, less frustrating, less tiring and less prone to error. Mental workload was greatly diminished with this system. Other types of system control for LIS patients were then investigated. It was found that galvanic skin response may be used as system input and that stress related bio-feedback helped lowering mental workload during stressful tasks. Improving communication was one of the main goal of this research and in particular emotional communication. A system including a gaze-controlled emotional voice synthesis and a personal emotional avatar was developed with this purpose. Assessment of the proposed system highlighted the enhanced capability to have dialogs more similar to normal ones, to express and to identify emotions. Enabling emotion communication in parallel to sentences was found to help with the conversation. Automatic emotion detection seemed to be the next step toward improving emotional communication. Several studies established that physiological signals relate to emotions. The ability to use physiological signals sensors with LIS patients and their non-invasiveness made them an ideal candidate for this study. One of the main difficulties of emotion detection is the collection of high intensity affect-related data. Studies in this field are currently mostly limited to laboratory investigations, using laboratory-induced emotions, and are rarely adapted for real-life applications. A virtual reality emotion elicitation technique based on appraisal theories was proposed here in order to study physiological signals of high intensity emotions in a real-life-like environment. While this solution successfully elicited positive and negative emotions, it did not elicit the desired emotions for all subject and was therefore, not appropriate for the goals of this research. Collecting emotions in the wild appeared as the best methodology toward emotion detection for real-life applications. The state of the art in the field was therefore reviewed and assessed using a specifically designed method for evaluating datasets collected for emotion recognition in real-life applications. The proposed evaluation method provides guidelines for future researcher in the field. Based on the research findings, a mobile application was developed for physiological and emotional data collection in the wild. Based on appraisal theory, this application provides guidance to users to provide valuable emotion labelling and help them differentiate moods from emotions. A sample dataset collected using this application was compared to one collected using a paper-based preliminary study. The dataset collected using the mobile application was found to provide a more valuable dataset with data consistent with literature. This mobile application was used to create an open-source affect-related physiological signals database. While the path toward emotion detection usable in real-life application is still long, we hope that the tools provided to the research community will represent a step toward achieving this goal in the future. Automatically detecting emotion could not only be used for LIS patients to communicate but also for total-LIS patients who have lost their ability to move their eyes. Indeed, giving the ability to family and caregiver to visualize and therefore understand the patients' emotional state could greatly improve their quality of life. This research provided tools to LIS patients and the scientific community to improve augmentative and alternative communication, technologies with better interfaces, emotion expression capabilities and real-life emotion detection. Emotion recognition methods for real-life applications could not only enhance health care but also robotics, domotics and many other fields of study. A complete system fully gaze-controlled was made available open-source with all the developed solutions for LIS patients. This is expected to enhance their daily lives by improving their communication and by facilitating the development of novel assistive systems capabilities

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Enhanced Living Environments

This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1303 “Algorithms, Architectures and Platforms for Enhanced Living Environments (AAPELE)”. The concept of Enhanced Living Environments (ELE) refers to the area of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) that is more related with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Effective ELE solutions require appropriate ICT algorithms, architectures, platforms, and systems, having in view the advance of science and technology in this area and the development of new and innovative solutions that can provide improvements in the quality of life for people in their homes and can reduce the financial burden on the budgets of the healthcare providers. The aim of this book is to become a state-of-the-art reference, discussing progress made, as well as prompting future directions on theories, practices, standards, and strategies related to the ELE area. The book contains 12 chapters and can serve as a valuable reference for undergraduate students, post-graduate students, educators, faculty members, researchers, engineers, medical doctors, healthcare organizations, insurance companies, and research strategists working in this area

A contribution to the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots

This dissertation contains the research and work completed by the PhD candidate on the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots. Both skills can be directly related with empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In this form, this research can be contextualized in the framework of recent developments towards the achievement of empathy machines. The first challenge at hands refers to designing pioneering techniques based on the use of social robots to improve user experience interacting with them. In particular, research focus is on eliminating or minimizing pain and anxiety as well as loneliness and stress of long-term hospitalized child patients. This challenge is approached by developing a cloud-based robotics architecture to effectively develop complex tasks related to hospitalized children assistance. More specifically, a multiagent learning system is introduced based on a combination of machine learning and cloud computing using low-cost robots (Innvo labs's Pleo rb). Moreover, a wireless communication system is also developed for the Pleo robot in order to help the health professional who conducts therapy with the child, monitoring, understanding, and controlling Pleo behavior at any moment. As a second challenge, a new formulation of the concept of creativity is proposed in order to empower computers with. Based on previous well established theories from Boden and Wiggins, this thesis redefines the formal mechanism of exploratory and transformational creativity in a way which facilitates the computational implementation of these mechanisms in Creativity Support Systems. The proposed formalization is applied and validated on two real cases: the first, about chocolate designing, in which a novel and flavorful combination of chocolate and fruit is generated. The second case is about the composition of a single voice tune of reel using ABC notation.Postprint (published version