Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots

Learning capabilities, often guided by competition/cooperation, play a fundamental and ubiquitous role in living beings. Moreover, several behaviours, such as feeding and courtship, involve environmental exploration and exploitation, including local competition, and lead to a global benefit for the colony. This can be considered as a form of global cooperation, even if the individual agent is not aware of the overall effect. This paper aims to demonstrate that identical biorobots, endowed with simple neural controllers, can evolve diversified behaviours and roles when competing for the same resources in the same arena. These behaviours also produce a benefit in terms of time and energy spent by the whole group. The robots are tasked with a classical foraging task structured through the cyclic activation of resources. The result is that each individual robot, while competing to reach the maximum number of available targets, tends to prefer a specific sequence of subtasks. This indirectly leads to the global result of task partitioning, whereby the cumulative energy spent, in terms of the overall travelled distance and the time needed to complete the task, tends to be minimized. A series of simulation experiments is conducted using different numbers of robots and scenarios: the common emergent result obtained is the role specialization of each robot. The description of the neural controller and the specialization mechanisms are reported in detail and discussed

Integrative Biomimetics of Autonomous Hexapedal Locomotion

Dürr V, Arena PP, Cruse H, et al. Integrative Biomimetics of Autonomous Hexapedal Locomotion. Frontiers in Neurorobotics. 2019;13: 88.Despite substantial advances in many different fields of neurorobotics in general, and biomimetic robots in particular, a key challenge is the integration of concepts: to collate and combine research on disparate and conceptually disjunct research areas in the neurosciences and engineering sciences. We claim that the development of suitable robotic integration platforms is of particular relevance to make such integration of concepts work in practice. Here, we provide an example for a hexapod robotic integration platform for autonomous locomotion. In a sequence of six focus sections dealing with aspects of intelligent, embodied motor control in insects and multipedal robots—ranging from compliant actuation, distributed proprioception and control of multiple legs, the formation of internal representations to the use of an internal body model—we introduce the walking robot HECTOR as a research platform for integrative biomimetics of hexapedal locomotion. Owing to its 18 highly sensorized, compliant actuators, light-weight exoskeleton, distributed and expandable hardware architecture, and an appropriate dynamic simulation framework, HECTOR offers many opportunities to integrate research effort across biomimetics research on actuation, sensory-motor feedback, inter-leg coordination, and cognitive abilities such as motion planning and learning of its own body size

Agile Co-Creation for Robots and Aging (ACCRA) Project

__Introduction__ Worldwide population is getting older. The older persons want to stay independent and wish to increase their engagement in social activities to tackle loneliness, depression, and isolation. Starting from these assumptions, we developed the ACCRA project (Agile Co-Creation for Robots and Aging) with the aim to enable the development of advanced ICT Robotics-based solutions for extending active and healthy aging in daily life by defining, developing and demonstrating an agile co-creation development process. __Methods__ ACCRA robotics solutions will be designed and developed to be tested in three different domains: mobility, daily life, socialization support in four countries (i.e., France, Netherlands, Italy, and Japan). The proposed approach identifies four different phases: (1) needs analysis, (2) agile co-creation, (3) experimentation, and (4) sustainability analysis. Currently, the first two phases were almost completed. For the needs phase, we have used the following recruitment criteria: (1) for mobility: age ≥ 60 years, the and presence of mobility issues assessed by Older Mobility Scale (EMS) with a score > 13; (2) for daily life: age ≥ 60 years, and the presence of difficulties engaging in housework assessed by Autonomie Gérontologie Groupes Iso-Ressources (AGGIR) with a GIR score ≥ 4; (3) for socialization support: age ≥ 60 years, and the absence or mild level of cognitive impairment assessed by Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) with a score ≥ 24. __Results__ The needs analysis and first co-creation sessions focus attention on the experience of older in the four countries. Preliminary results showed how, in all the pilot sites, many expectations were raised from older, formal and informal caregivers about the application of the technology into their life. Minor concerns existed about privacy, real efficacy and modularity in a real-world environment. Overall, a good attitude was recorded towards the use of technologies to support life and promote independent living. Moreover, the older engaged in our studies showed a great interest to be actively involved in the developing phase of something built based on their needs. __Conclusions__ The availability of new solutions to increase independence and quality of life in a sustainable manner appears to be mandatory in the actual society considering the actual socio-economic situation over the industrial countries

Robot swarms as an educational tool: The Thymio’s way

Robotics provides useful tools for educational purposes, allowing to engage students in learning within disparate domains, from computer science and artificial intelligence – traditionally the main domains for educational robotics – to general education, human and social sciences and arts. Robots can be used with different purposes, from being simple tools to be programmed with some specific behaviour, to being peers with whom to engage in a fruitful interaction for a collaborative learning purpose. In this sense, they can also foster learning of transversal skills such as communication and cooperation. In this article, we propose robot swarms as a novel educational tool to target exactly those transversal skills that are difficult to account otherwise. The usage of multiple robots interacting to solve a common problem can support the learning of concepts related to cooperation and collective actions and can make accessible notions about complex systems that are common in physical, biological, economic and social sciences. Additionally, the possibility to interact and participate in the collective behaviour displayed by the robot swarm can strongly increase the comprehension and engagement with the proposed concept. Motivated by this picture, we propose a roadmap for the utilization of swarm robotics for educational purposes, which is hinged on the Thymio robot, a simple but powerful educational robot that presents all the features required for swarm robotics experimentation. We propose two case studies and we substantiate the proposal with preliminary results from a demonstration of robot swarms performed during a recent robotics festival

Design and Development of a Robotic Sensorized Handle for Monitoring Older Adult Grasping Force

Service robots have the potential to support the personal mobility of elderly population. Monitoring and measuring grasping force in older adults is an important issue both from robotic and clinical perspectives. From robot point of view, new adaptive control strategies can be implemented based on the users' force; clinicians can monitor the changes in the grasp strength over time to evaluate abnormal conditions, which can be associated with geriatric syndromes. In this context, this work focused on the design, development and testing of a sensorized smart handle able to enhance the robotic mobility support service provided by the robot, called ASTRO. The primary goal of this paper is to design the sensorized handle according to clinical and technical specifications in terms of working range, sensitivity and clinical requirements. Then, the smart handle was tested with 19 subjects to investigate whether the system is able to detect forces correlated to the ones measured with a traditional tool. Additionally, further analysis were conducted to analyse how the forces were distributed to refine and optimize the design. The study shows meaningful results as the grasp forces measured with the smart handle and the traditional tool were significantly correlated

Assistive robots for socialization in elderly people: results pertaining to the needs of the users

Background/aim: Technological solutions can support the elderly, improve their quality of life and reduce isolation and loneliness. The Euro-Japan ACCRA (Agile Co-Creation for Robots and Aging) project has the objective of building a reference co-creation methodology for the development of robotic solutions for ageing. The aim of this study is to provide a pilot qualitative analysis of the real needs of elderly people and their caregivers when exposed to conversational activities with robots and to identify priority needs that should be developed from end-user perspectives. Methods: A qualitative research design was adopted to define a pre-structured questionnaire that was administered to the elderly taking part in the piloting sessions. Three groups of end-users were included: subjects with an age ≥ 60 years, informal caregivers and formal caregivers. Results: The interviews were carried out in Italy and Japan. A total of 17 elderly and 36 caregivers were recruited. Common needs in the two sites were categorized into 3 groups: Communication; Emotion Detection and Safety. General robot acceptance level is good and perception is positive among participants in the pilot sites. Conclusion: A positive perception of the elderly on the application of a robotic solution was found and many are the needs that could be addressed by an appropriate and careful robotic development taking into account the real needs and capabilities of the involved subjects

MARIO Project: experimentation in the hospital setting

In the EU funded MARIO project, specific technological tools are adopted for the patient with dementia (PWD). At this stage of the project, the experimentation phase is under way, and the first two trials were completed as shown below: the first trial was performed in November 2016, and second trial was performed in April 2017. The current implemented and assessed applications (apps) are My Music app, My News app, My Games app, My Calendar app, My Family and Friends app, and Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) app. The aim of the present study was to provide a preliminary analysis of the acceptability and efficacy of MARIO companion robot on clinical, cognitive, neuropsychiatric, affective and social aspects, resilience capacity, quality of life in PWD, and burden level of the caregivers. Thirteen patients [5 patients (M = 3; F = 2) in first trial, and 8 patients (M = 6; F = 2) in second trial] were screened for eligibility and all were included. At admission and at discharge, the following tests were administered: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), Clock Drawing Test (CDT), Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), Hachinski Ischemic Scale (HIS), Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HDRS-21), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Social Dysfunction Rating Scale (SDRS), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s Disease (QOL-AD), Caregiver Burden Inventory (CBI), Tinetti Balance Assessment (TBA), and Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) was carried out. A questionnaire based on the Al-mere Acceptance model was used to evaluate the acceptance of the MARIO robot. During the first trial, My Music, My Games and My News apps were used. At discharge, no significant improvement was shown through the above questionnaires. During the second trial, My Music, My Games, My News, My Calendar, My Family and Friends, and CGA apps were used. At discharge, significant improvements were observed in the following parameters: NPI (p = 0.027), GDS-15 (p = 0.042), and BRS (p = 0.041), CBI (p = 0.046). Instead, the number of medications is increased at discharge (p = 0.038). The mean of hospitalization days is 5.6 ± 3.9 (range = 3–13 days). The Almere Model Questionnaire suggested, a higher acceptance level was shown in first and second trial