Peripheral Display for Conveying Real-time Pain Condition of Persons with Severe Intellectual Disabilities to their Caregivers

An effective assisting tool for caregivers to monitor pain of persons with severe intellectual disabilities (SID) is eagerly needed, since these persons have difficulties with self-report. The Bio response System detecting stress and the techniques with potential to distinguish pain from stress suggest the possibility to detect pain with physiological data. In the current paper, we propose the design of a peripheral display for making caregivers aware of the real-time pain condition of their clients without added attention burden. An iterative user-centered design process resulted in two prototypes and corresponding evaluations of one peripheral display. The potential of the display to help caregivers be promptly aware of the pain condition of clients was tested with targeted users. Guidelines for the design of peripheral display applications in similar semi-hospitalized contexts are provided. Further steps in this study will be to test the adjusted Bio response System for detecting pain in persons with SID adequately

Peripheral Display for Conveying Real-time Pain Condition of Persons with Severe Intellectual Disabilities to their Caregivers

An effective assisting tool for caregivers to monitor pain of persons with severe intellectual disabilities (SID) is eagerly needed, since these persons have difficulties with self-report. The Bio response System detecting stress and the techniques with potential to distinguish pain from stress suggest the possibility to detect pain with physiological data. In the current paper, we propose the design of a peripheral display for making caregivers aware of the real-time pain condition of their clients without added attention burden. An iterative user-centered design process resulted in two prototypes and corresponding evaluations of one peripheral display. The potential of the display to help caregivers be promptly aware of the pain condition of clients was tested with targeted users. Guidelines for the design of peripheral display applications in similar semi-hospitalized contexts are provided. Further steps in this study will be to test the adjusted Bio response System for detecting pain in persons with SID adequately

Adding a context: will it influence human-robot interaction of people living with dementia?

Improving the quality of life of people with dementia in long-term care facilities is very important and can be achieved by designing engaging activities for the residents. The introduction of social robots for people with dementia has already proven its benefits, and we expected that adding contextual cues to this interaction would enhance the positive engagement of these individuals. A total of five participants took part in a comparison study in which they engaged in a free-play session with the robot PLEO and in a free-play session with the robot PLEO within a jungle-themed context. The gaze and arm/hand behaviors of the participants were measured and were used to determine the level of their engagement. Contrary to our expectations, we found a significant decrease in engagement for the sessions where the context was added to the interaction. Our explanation of this result is that the added cues increased the threshold to interact with the robot, but the elderly were still engaged as spectators

A Robot Math Tutor that Gives Feedback

We report on the exploratory design and study of a robot math tutor that can provide feedback on specific errors made by children solving basic addition and subtraction problems up to 100. We discuss two interaction design patterns, one for speech recognition of answers when children think aloud, and one for providing error-specific feedback. We evaluate our design patterns and whether our feedback mechanism motivates children and improves their performance at primary schools with children (N=41) aged 7–9. We did not find any motivational or learning effects of our feedback mechanism but lessons learnt include that the robot can execute our interaction design patterns autonomously, and advanced algorithms for error classification and adaptation to children’s performance levels in our feedback mechanism are needed

Getting Acquainted for a Long-Term Child-Robot Interaction

We are developing a social robot that should autonomously interact long-term with pediatric oncology patients. The child and the robot need to get acquainted with one another before a long-term interaction can take place. We designed five interaction design patterns and two sets of robot behaviors to structure a getting acquainted interaction. We discuss the results of a user study (N = 75, 8–11 y.o.) evaluating these patterns and robot behaviors. Specifically, we are exploring whether the children successfully got acquainted with the robot and to what extent the children bonded with the robot. Results show that children effectively picked up how to talk to the robot. This is important, because the better the performance the more comfortable the children are, the more socially attractive the robot is, and the more intimate the conversation gets. The evaluation furthermore revealed that it is important for children, in order to get familiar with the robot, to have shared interests with the robot. Finally, most children did initiate a bond with the robot