Towards long-term social child-robot interaction: using multi-activity switching to engage young users

Social robots have the potential to provide support in a number of practical domains, such as learning and behaviour change. This potential is particularly relevant for children, who have proven receptive to interactions with social robots. To reach learning and therapeutic goals, a number of issues need to be investigated, notably the design of an effective child-robot interaction (cHRI) to ensure the child remains engaged in the relationship and that educational goals are met. Typically, current cHRI research experiments focus on a single type of interaction activity (e.g. a game). However, these can suffer from a lack of adaptation to the child, or from an increasingly repetitive nature of the activity and interaction. In this paper, we motivate and propose a practicable solution to this issue: an adaptive robot able to switch between multiple activities within single interactions. We describe a system that embodies this idea, and present a case study in which diabetic children collaboratively learn with the robot about various aspects of managing their condition. We demonstrate the ability of our system to induce a varied interaction and show the potential of this approach both as an educational tool and as a research method for long-term cHRI

Affective Motivational Collaboration Theory

Existing computational theories of collaboration explain some of the important concepts underlying collaboration, e.g., the collaborators\u27 commitments and communication. However, the underlying processes required to dynamically maintain the elements of the collaboration structure are largely unexplained. Our main insight is that in many collaborative situations acknowledging or ignoring a collaborator\u27s affective state can facilitate or impede the progress of the collaboration. This implies that collaborative agents need to employ affect-related processes that (1) use the collaboration structure to evaluate the status of the collaboration, and (2) influence the collaboration structure when required. This thesis develops a new affect-driven computational framework to achieve these objectives and thus empower agents to be better collaborators. Contributions of this thesis are: (1) Affective Motivational Collaboration (AMC) theory, which incorporates appraisal processes into SharedPlans theory. (2) New computational appraisal algorithms based on collaboration structure. (3) Algorithms such as goal management, that use the output of appraisal to maintain collaboration structures. (4) Implementation of a computational system based on AMC theory. (5) Evaluation of AMC theory via two user studies to a) validate our appraisal algorithms, and b) investigate the overall functionality of our framework within an end-to-end system with a human and a robot

Recent Advancements in Augmented Reality for Robotic Applications: A Survey

Robots are expanding from industrial applications to daily life, in areas such as medical robotics, rehabilitative robotics, social robotics, and mobile/aerial robotics systems. In recent years, augmented reality (AR) has been integrated into many robotic applications, including medical, industrial, human–robot interactions, and collaboration scenarios. In this work, AR for both medical and industrial robot applications is reviewed and summarized. For medical robot applications, we investigated the integration of AR in (1) preoperative and surgical task planning; (2) image-guided robotic surgery; (3) surgical training and simulation; and (4) telesurgery. AR for industrial scenarios is reviewed in (1) human–robot interactions and collaborations; (2) path planning and task allocation; (3) training and simulation; and (4) teleoperation control/assistance. In addition, the limitations and challenges are discussed. Overall, this article serves as a valuable resource for working in the field of AR and robotic research, offering insights into the recent state of the art and prospects for improvement

Implementación de una Celda de Manufactura en el Ensamble de una Torre de Hanói

Technology in the modern world, has become a necessity electronic and mechanical parts are unified to become mechanisms, which are the facilitating devices of human life and work. A common problem in the fabrication of a product is the high costs of personnel and the physical limitations, an example is the production of the tower of Hanoi. Thus, taking into account the knowledge acquired of the different courses at the level of robotics, mechanics, electronics and programming, the design and construction of a manufacturing cell and its operating interface was carried out, which has as its main function the distribution and manipulation of the elements necessary for the assembly of a tower of Hanoi, to know the process that a company requires for the elaboration of a product in an automated way. For the development of this project, four different processes were considered, a supply stage through pneumatic circuits, machine vision algorithms for quality control of the parts involved in the assembly, a selection process and place developed by a Phantom type robot with 4 degrees of freedom and, finally, the delivery of the finished product by means of a conveyor belt for later packaging.La tecnología en el mundo moderno se ha convertido en una necesidad la cual por medio de partes electrónicas y mecánicas se unifican para convertirse en mecanismos los cuales son capaces de facilitar la vida del ser humano y optimizar el trabajo. Un problema común en la producción de un bien son los altos costos del personal y las limitaciones físicas que estos tienen, un ejemplo claro es la producción de la torre de Hanoi. Es así como teniendo en cuenta los conocimientos adquiridos en los diferentes cursos a nivel de robótica, mecánica, electrónica y de programación se realizó el diseño y construcción de una celda de manufactura y su interfaz de operación, la cual tiene como función principal la distribución y manipulación de los elementos necesarios para el ensamblaje de una torre de Hanoi, con el fin de dar a conocer el proceso que requiere una compañía para la elaboración de un producto de manera automatizada. Para el desarrollo del presente proyecto se tuvieron en cuenta cuatro diferentes procesos, una etapa de abastecimiento a través de circuitos neumáticos con su respectivo compresor, algoritmos de visión de máquina en conjunto con una cámara oscura, mitigando los efectos de las variaciones en la luz ambiente, para la selección y el control de calidad de las piezas involucradas en el ensamblaje, un proceso de pick and place desarrollado por un robot de 4 grados de libertad y, por último, la entrega del producto terminado mediante una banda transportadora para su posterior embalaje

BlueSky: Combining Task Planning and Activity-Centric Access Control for Assistive Humanoid Robots

In the not too distant future, assistive humanoid robots will provide versatile assistance for coping with everyday life. In their interactions with humans, not only safety, but also security and privacy issues need to be considered. In this Blue Sky paper, we therefore argue that it is time to bring task planning and execution as a well-established field of robotics with access and usage control in the field of security and privacy closer together. In particular, the recently proposed activity-based view on access and usage control provides a promising approach to bridge the gap between these two perspectives. We argue that humanoid robots provide for specific challenges due to their task-universality and their use in both, private and public spaces. Furthermore, they are socially connected to various parties and require policy creation at runtime due to learning. We contribute first attempts on the architecture and enforcement layer as well as on joint modeling, and discuss challenges and a research roadmap also for the policy and objectives layer. We conclude that the underlying combination of decentralized systems\u27 and smart environments\u27 research aspects provides for a rich source of challenges that need to be addressed on the road to deployment

A Structured Approach for Designing Collaboration Experiences for Virtual Worlds

While 3D virtual worlds are more frequently being used as interactive environments for collaboration, there is still no structured approach developed specifically for the combined design of 3D virtual environments and the collaborative activities in them. We argue that formalizing both the structural elements of virtual worlds and aspects of collaborative work or collaborative learning helps to develop fruitful collaborative work and learning experiences. As such, we present the avatar-based collaboration framework (ABC framework). Based on semiotics theory, the framework puts the collaborating groups into the center of the design and emphasizes the use of distinct features of 3D virtual worlds for use in collaborative learning environments and activities. In developing the framework, we have drawn from best practices in instructional design and game design, research in HCI, and findings and observations from our own empirical research that investigates collaboration patterns in virtual worlds. Along with the framework, we present a case study of its first application for a global collaborative learning project. This paper particularly addresses virtual world designers, educators, meeting facilitators, and other practitioners by thoroughly describing the process of creating rich collaboration and collaborative learning experiences for virtual worlds with the ABC framework