130 research outputs found
A contribution to the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots
This dissertation contains the research and work completed by the PhD candidate on the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots. Both skills can be directly related with empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In this form, this research can be contextualized in the framework of recent developments towards the achievement of empathy machines.
The first challenge at hands refers to designing pioneering techniques based on the use of social robots to improve user experience interacting with them. In particular, research focus is on eliminating or minimizing pain and anxiety as well as loneliness and stress of long-term hospitalized child patients. This challenge is approached by developing a cloud-based robotics architecture to effectively develop complex tasks related to hospitalized children assistance. More specifically, a multiagent learning system is introduced based on a combination of machine learning and cloud computing using low-cost robots (Innvo labs's Pleo rb). Moreover, a wireless communication system is also developed for the Pleo robot in order to help the health professional who conducts therapy with the child, monitoring, understanding, and controlling Pleo behavior at any moment.
As a second challenge, a new formulation of the concept of creativity is proposed in order to empower computers with. Based on previous well established theories from Boden and Wiggins, this thesis redefines the formal mechanism of exploratory and transformational creativity in a way which facilitates the computational implementation of these mechanisms in Creativity Support Systems. The proposed formalization is applied and validated on two real cases: the first, about chocolate designing, in which a novel and flavorful combination of chocolate and fruit is generated. The second case is about the composition of a single voice tune of reel using ABC notation
A contribution to the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots
This dissertation contains the research and work completed by the PhD candidate on the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots. Both skills can be directly related with empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In this form, this research can be contextualized in the framework of recent developments towards the achievement of empathy machines.
The first challenge at hands refers to designing pioneering techniques based on the use of social robots to improve user experience interacting with them. In particular, research focus is on eliminating or minimizing pain and anxiety as well as loneliness and stress of long-term hospitalized child patients. This challenge is approached by developing a cloud-based robotics architecture to effectively develop complex tasks related to hospitalized children assistance. More specifically, a multiagent learning system is introduced based on a combination of machine learning and cloud computing using low-cost robots (Innvo labs's Pleo rb). Moreover, a wireless communication system is also developed for the Pleo robot in order to help the health professional who conducts therapy with the child, monitoring, understanding, and controlling Pleo behavior at any moment.
As a second challenge, a new formulation of the concept of creativity is proposed in order to empower computers with. Based on previous well established theories from Boden and Wiggins, this thesis redefines the formal mechanism of exploratory and transformational creativity in a way which facilitates the computational implementation of these mechanisms in Creativity Support Systems. The proposed formalization is applied and validated on two real cases: the first, about chocolate designing, in which a novel and flavorful combination of chocolate and fruit is generated. The second case is about the composition of a single voice tune of reel using ABC notation.Postprint (published version
Externalising moods and psychological states in a cloud based system to enhance a pet-robot and child’s interaction
Background:This PATRICIA research project is about using pet robots to reduce pain
and anxiety in hospitalized children. The study began 2 years ago and it is believed that
the advances made in this project are significant. Patients, parents, nurses, psycholo-
gists, and engineers have adopted the Pleo robot, a baby dinosaur robotic pet, which
works in different ways to assist children during hospitalization.
Methods: Focus is spent on creating a wireless communication system with the Pleo
in order to help the coordinator, who conducts therapy with the child, monitor, under-
stand, and control Pleo’s behavior at any moment. This article reports how this techno-
logical function is being developed and tested.
Results: Wireless communication between the Pleo and an Android device is
achieved. The developed Android app allows the user to obtain any state of the robot
without stopping its interaction with the patient. Moreover, information is sent to a
cloud, so that robot moods, states and interactions can be shared among different
robots.
Conclusions: Pleo attachment was successful for more than 1 month, working with
children in therapy, which makes the investment capable of positive therapeutic
possibilities. This technical improvement in the Pleo addresses two key issues in social
robotics: needing an enhanced response to maintain the attention and engagement of
the child, and using the system as a platform to collect the states of the child’s progress
for clinical purposes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
An OSA-CBM Multi-Agent Vehicle Health Management Architecture for Self-Health Awareness
Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) systems on modern aircraft or autonomous unmanned vehicles should provide diagnostic and prognostic capabilities with lower support costs and amount of data traffic. When mission objectives cannot be reached for the control system since unanticipated operating conditions exists, namely a failure, the mission plan must be revised or altered according to the health monitoring system assessment. Representation of the system health knowledge must facilitate interaction with the control system to compensate for subsystem degradation. Several generic architectures have been described for the implementation of health monitoring systems and their integration with the control system. In particular, the Open System Architecture - Condition-Based Maintenance (OSA-CBM) approach is considered in this work as initial point, and it is evolved in the sense of self-health awareness, by defining an appropriated multi-agent smart health management architecture based on smart device models, communication agents and a distributed control system. A case study about its application on fuel-cells as auxiliary power generator will demonstrate the integration.Postprint (published version
A transformational creativity tool to support chocolate designers
A new formulation of the central ideas of Boden's well-established theory on combinational, exploratory and transformational creativity is presented. This new formulation, based on the idea of conceptual space, redefines some terms and includes several types of concept properties (appropriateness and relevance), whose relationship facilitates the computational implementation of the transformational creativity mechanism. The presented formulation is applied to a real case of chocolate designing in which a novel and flavorful combination of chocolate and fruit is generated. The experimentation was conducted jointly with a Spanish chocolate chef. Experimental results prove the relationship between appropriateness and relevance in different frameworks and show that the formulation presented is not only useful for understanding how the creative mechanisms of design works but also facilitates its implementation in real cases to support creativity processes.Postprint (author's final draft
Creativity Support System for cake design
In this paper, a new formulation of Creativity is presented in the context of Creativity Support Systems. This formulation is based on the central ideas of the theory of Boden. It redefines some concepts such as appropriateness and relevance in order to allow the implementation of a support system for creative people. The approach is based on the conceptual space proposed by Boden and formalized by other authors. The presented
formulation is applied to a real case in which a new chocolate cake with fruit is design. Data collected from a Spanish chocolate chef has been used to validate the proposed system. Experimental results show that the formulation presented is not only useful for understanding how the creative mechanisms of design works, but also
facilitates its implementation in real cases to support creativity processes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
AoL: Action Learning: A methodology to capture expertise in adjustment tasks
It is well known that some people can perform a
task with greater precision and accuracy than
others: they are experts. In the past, experts were
interviewed to find out why they have this expertise,
but this was not always completely effective
because often experts "don't know what they
know". In this paper we propose a model of the
process of making decisions performed by experts
in the final adjustment of products task. Based on
this model, we also propose a system based on a
machine learning module that facilitates the capture
of these expert skills. We give an example to illustrate
the process proposed.Postprint (published version
A Transformational creativity tool to support musical composition
In this paper we use the idea of conceptual space introduced by Boden
and redefine some properties such appropriateness and relevance that facilitate the
computational implementation of the transformational creativity mechanism. While
appropriateness can only be evaluated by an expert, relevance can be objectively
measured for any spectator. Computational creativity is based on the relationship
between appropriateness and relevance of a concept, and therefore a computational
system can be used to support this task. The paper analyses this relationship in the
field of music in order to obtain a computer tool to support the musical composition
task.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
A Cloud robotics architecture to foster individual child partnership in medical facilities
Robots and automation systems have become a
valuable partner in several facets of human life: from learning
and teaching, to daily working, including health monitoring
and assistance. So far, these appealing robot-based applications
are restricted to conduct repetitive, yet useful, tasks due to the
reduced individual robots’ capabilities in terms of processing
and computation. This concern prevents current robots from
facing more complex applications related to understanding hu-
man beings and perceiving their subtle feelings. Such hardware
limitations have been already found in the computer science
field. In this domain, they are currently being addressed using
a new resource exploitation model coined as cloud computing,
which is targeted at enabling massive storage and computation
using smartly connected and inexpensive commodity hardware.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a cloud-based robotics
architecture to effectively develop complex tasks related to
hospitalized children assistance. More specifically, this paper
presents a multi-agent learning system that combines machine
learning and cloud computing using low-cost robots to (1)
collect and perceive children status, (2) build a human-readable
set of rules related to the child-robot relationship, and (3)
improve the children experience during their stay in the hos-
pital. Conducted preliminary experiments proof the feasibility
of this proposal and encourage practitioners to work towards
this direction.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
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