Social robots for older users: a possibility to support assessment and social interventions

In the last decades, various researches in the field of robotics have created numerous opportunities for innovative support of the older population. The goal of this work was to review and highlight how social robots can help the daily life of older people, and be useful also as assessment tools. We will underline the aspects of usability and acceptability of robotic supports in the psychosocial work with older persons. The actual usability of the system influences the perception of the ease of use only when the user has no or low experience, while expert users’ perception is related to their attitude towards the robot. This finding should be more deeply analysed because it may have a strong influence on the design of future interfaces for elderly-robot interaction. Robots can play an important role to tackle the societal challenge of the growing older population. The authors report some recent studies with older users, where it was demonstrated that the acceptability of robotics during daily life activities, and also in cognitive evaluation, could be supported by social robot

THE EVALUATIVE RESEARCH AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PROFESSION

The evaluative research is an important goal of applied research in psychology, and can constitute a link between scientific research and the definition of an evidence-based profession, in many fields of psychology: e.g., educational, social, work, clinical psychology.But to make a good evaluative research some methodological considerations are needed. First of all, the complexity of this field of study overwhelms the traditional methods based on laboratory research, which defines and manages variables, sampling, and statistical analyses in a reductive way

Affect Recognition in Autism: a single case study on integrating a humanoid robot in a standard therapy.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a multifaceted developmental disorder that comprises a mixture of social impairments, with deficits in many areas including the theory of mind, imitation, and communication. Moreover, people with autism have difficulty in recognising and understanding emotional expressions. We are currently working on integrating a humanoid robot within the standard clinical treatment offered to children with ASD to support the therapists. In this article, using the A-B-A' single case design, we propose a robot-assisted affect recognition training and to present the results on the child’s progress during the five months of clinical experimentation. In the investigation, we tested the generalization of learning and the long-term maintenance of new skills via the NEPSY-II affection recognition sub-test. The results of this single case study suggest the feasibility and effectiveness of using a humanoid robot to assist with emotion recognition training in children with ASD

Kindergarten Children Attitude Towards Humanoid Robots: what is the Effect of the First Experience?

Possible applications of robots are growing in educational contexts, where they can support and enhance the traditional learning at any level, including kindergarten. However, the acceptance of such novel technology among the kids is not fully understood, especially for the youngest ones. In this abstract, we present an experiment that investigates the attitude of 52 preschooler children before and after the interaction with a humanoid robot in kindergarten setting. The main hypothesis is that ideas and prejudices can change after a controlled interaction with a physical robot. The study found that children exposed to the robot decrease their distress and positively change their attitude toward the technological device. The results suggest that an early, controlled exposure may facilitate future acceptance

A comparison of kindergarten storytelling by human and humanoid robot with different social behavior

In this paper, we present a study on the influence of different social behavior on preschool children's perception of stories narrated either by a humanoid robot or by a human teacher. Four conditions were considered: static human, static robot, expressive human and expressive robot. Two stories, with knowledge and emotional content, were narrated in two different encounters. After each story, children draw what they remember of the story. We examined drawings of 81 children to study whether the sociability of the teacher (robot or human) could influence elements and details recorded. Results suggest a positive effect of the expressive behavior in robot storytelling, whose efficacy is comparable to the human with the same behavior or better if the expressive robot is compared with a static inexpressive human

“Robot, tell me a tale!”: A Social Robot as tool for Teachers in Kindergarten

Robots are versatile devices that are promising tools for supporting teaching and learning in the classroom or at home. In fact, robots can be engaging and motivating, especially for young children. This paper presents an experimental study with 81 kindergarten children on memorizations of two tales narrated by a humanoid robot. Variables of the study are the content of the tales (knowledge or emotional) and the different social behaviour of the narrators: static human, static robot, expressive human, and expressive robot. Results suggest a positive effect of the expressive behaviour in robot storytelling, whose effectiveness is comparable to a human with the same behaviour and better when compared with a static inexpressive human. Higher efficacy is achieved by the robot in the tale with knowledge content, while the limited capability to express emotions made the robot less effective in the tale with emotional content

Deep learning systems for estimating visual attention in robot-assisted therapy of children with autism and intellectual disability

Recent studies suggest that some children with autism prefer robots as tutors for improving their social interaction and communication abilities which are impaired due to their disorder. Indeed, research has focused on developing a very promising form of intervention named Robot-Assisted Therapy. This area of intervention poses many challenges, including the necessary flexibility and adaptability to real unconstrained therapeutic settings, which are different from the constrained lab settings where most of the technology is typically tested. Among the most common impairments of children with autism and intellectual disability is social attention, which includes difficulties in establishing the correct visual focus of attention. This article presents an investigation on the use of novel deep learning neural network architectures for automatically estimating if the child is focusing their visual attention on the robot during a therapy session, which is an indicator of their engagement. To study the application, the authors gathered data from a clinical experiment in an unconstrained setting, which provided low-resolution videos recorded by the robot camera during the child–robot interaction. Two deep learning approaches are implemented in several variants and compared with a standard algorithm for face detection to verify the feasibility of estimating the status of the child directly from the robot sensors without relying on bulky external settings, which can distress the child with autism. One of the proposed approaches demonstrated a very high accuracy and it can be used for off-line continuous assessment during the therapy or for autonomously adapting the intervention in future robots with better computational capabilities

Adapting robot-assisted therapy of children with autism and different levels of intellectual disability

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disorder that requires personalising the treatment to the personal condition, in particular for individuals with Intellectual Disability (ID), which are the majority of those with ASD. In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis of our on-going research on personalised care for children with ASD and ID. The investigation focuses on integrating a social robot within the standard treatment in which tasks and level of interaction are adapted to the ID level of the individual and follow his progress after the rehabilitation

Social robots to support practitioners in the education and clinical care of children: The CARER-AID project

The Controlled Autonomous Robot for Early detection and Rehabilitation of Autism and Intellectual Disability (CARER-AID) project aimed at verifying the effects of the introduction of a humanoid robot in the clinical routine as a supervised autonomous assistant to support clinical staff in the care of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) associated with Intellectual Disability (ID). The CARER-AID project was undertaken by a multidisciplinary team composed of experts in artificial intelligence and robotics and clinical psychologists experienced in the treatment of ID. The literature shows that children with ASD seem to prefer robotic devices over non-robotic instruments and indeed humans. Starting from this, CARER-AID clinical studies provided experimental evidence that demonstrated several potential benefits of robot-assisted therapy when treating children with neurodevelopmental disorders, such as ASD with or without ID. Alongside the study in a clinical setting, the project also investigated the acceptability and the attitudes towards social robotics in an educational context. The study evaluated the teachers' perception of introducing a humanoid robot in a kindergarten and the attitudes of children with Typical Development (TD) towards. The results of the clinical and educational studies showed the usefulness of social robotics in supporting practitioners in their interventions with both TD and neurodevelopmental disorders. The CARER-AID project offers a unitary vision of a robot that can serve in different aspects and levels of the care, from the education to the therapeutic rehabilitation, from assessment to monitoring of results, providing assistance to caregivers and professionals at school and in clinical settings