Generating Shared Latent Variables for Robots to Imitate Human Movements and Understand their Physical Limitations

International audienceAssistive robotics and particularly robot coaches may be very helpful for rehabilitation healthcare. In this context, we propose a method based on Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model (GP-LVM) to transfer knowledge between a physiotherapist, a robot coach and a patient. Our model is able to map visual human body features to robot data in order to facilitate the robot learning and imitation. In addition , we propose to extend the model to adapt robots' understanding to patient's physical limitations during the assessment of rehabilitation exercises. Experimental evaluation demonstrates promising results for both robot imitation and model adaptation according to the patients' limitations

The Relevance of Social Cues in Assistive Training with a Social Robot

This paper examines whether social cues, such as facial expressions, can be used to adapt and tailor a robot-assisted training in order to maximize performance and comfort. Specifically, this paper serves as a basis in determining whether key facial signals, including emotions and facial actions, are common among participants during a physical and cognitive training scenario. In the experiment, participants performed basic arm exercises with a social robot as a guide. We extracted facial features from video recordings of participants and applied a recursive feature elimination algorithm to select a subset of discriminating facial features. These features are correlated with the performance of the user and the level of difficulty of the exercises. The long-term aim of this work, building upon the work presented here, is to develop an algorithm that can eventually be used in robot-assisted training to allow a robot to tailor a training program based on the physical capabilities as well as the social cues of the users.SOCRATE