Qualitative review of object recognition techniques for tabletop manipulation

This paper provides a qualitative review of different object recognition techniques relevant for near-proximity Human- Robot Interaction. These techniques are divided into three categories: 2D correspondence, 3D correspondence and nonvision based methods. For each technique an implementation is chosen that is representative of the existing technology to provide a broad review to assist in selecting an appropriate method for tabletop object recognition manipulation. For each of these techniques we give their strengths and weaknesses based on defined criteria. We then discuss and provide recommendations for each of them

Using a Robot Peer to Encourage the Production of Spatial Concepts in a Second Language

We conducted a study with 25 children to investigate the effectiveness of a robot measuring and encouraging production of spatial concepts in a second language compared to a human experimenter. Productive vocabulary is often not measured in second language learning, due to the difficulty of both learning and assessing productive learning gains. We hypothesized that a robot peer may help assessing productive vocabulary. Previous studies on foreign language learning have found that robots can help to reduce language anxiety, leading to improved results. In our study we found that a robot is able to reach a similar performance to the experimenter in getting children to produce, despite the person's advantages in social ability, and discuss the extent to which a robot may be suitable for this task