The ALIZ-E1 projects goal is to design a robot companion able to maintain affective interactions with young users over a period of time. One of these interactions consists in teaching a dance to hospitalized children according to their capabilities. We propose a methodology for adapting both, the movements used in the dance based on the users cognitive and physical capabilities through a set of metrics, and the robots interaction based on the users personality traits

Baroni, I

Demiris, Y

Nalin, M

Ros, R

English

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Adapting robot behavior to user's capabilities

Spiral - Imperial College Digital Repository

Adapting Robot Behavior to User’s Capabilities: a DanceInstruction Study∗Raquel Ros, Yiannis DemirisImperial CollegeLondon, UK{rrosespi, y.demiris}@imperial.ac.ukIlaria Baroni, Marco NalinFondazione Centro San Raffaele del MonteTaborMilan, Italy{baroni.ilaria,nalin.marco}@hsr.itABSTRACTThe ALIZ-E1 project’s goal is to design a robot companionable to maintain affective interactions with young users overa period of time. One of these interactions consists in teach-ing a dance to hospitalized children according to their capa-bilities. We propose a methodology for adapting both, themovements used in the dance based on the user’s cognitiveand physical capabilities through a set of metrics, and therobot’s interaction based on the user’s personality traits.Categories and Subject DescriptorsH.1.2 [Models and Principles]: [User/Machine Systems];I.2.9 [Artificial Intelligence]: Robotics—Commercial robotsand applicationsGeneral TermsDesign, Measurement, Experimentation, Human factors1. INTRODUCTIONWhen designing a robot that will interact with users whileperforming a task we must bear in mind two main aspects:(i) how will the robot perform the task, i.e. the engineeringpoint of view (which actions is the robot going to perform?,how and when is it going to perform them?); and (ii) howwill the robot interact with the user and how this interactionwill modify the performance of the task, i.e. the social pointof view (when should the robot start the interaction? whattype of feedback to provide? when to stop the interaction?).The goal of the ALIZ-E project is to design a robot com-panion able to maintain believable multimodal affective in-teractions with young users over an extended period of time.The robot will be tested at San Raffaele Hospital, providingsupport for hospitalized children with diabetes and obesity.In the first stage, the robot is supposed to establish a bondwith the child through verbal and non-verbal interaction.One of these interactions consist in having dance sessionswith the hospitalized children according to his/her capabil-ities. Creative dance appears to be a valuable instrumentfor stimulating or enhancing physical and social/emotional∗This research was supported by FP7 grant agreement no.248116 ALIZ-E project.1http://www.aliz-e.org.growth in people [1]. On the one hand, it motivates exercisethrough a fun activity for children, and on the other hand,it also helps the development of social skills such as cooper-ation, self-confidence and communication. To this end, wehave interviewed dance teachers to both, learn about danceteaching techniques (i.e., the engineering aspect of the task)and strategies to adapt the dance sessions based on the in-teraction with the user (i.e., the social aspect of the task).In both cases, the user’s profile is taking into account as wedescribe in next sections.This paper mainly focuses in the design of the dancingtask based on the user’s model, although we also proposethe influence of social queues in the task performance. Weconclude the work describing a first experience where theNao robot teaches a dance to two children.2. ADAPTING THE TASKA common and simple technique to teach a choreographydance consists of a two-steps methodology. First the teachershows the movements used in the choreography indepen-dently, focusing and evaluating whether they are correctlyperform in technical terms (i.e., position and movement ofthe different body parts) – the exploration stage. Once thesehave been learned in a satisfactory way, the teacher proceedsto teach the choreography using the movements shown be-fore – the dancing stage. The sequence is gradually enlargedincluding new movements as the sequence is memorized andcorrectly performed. If at a given point a movement is notcorrectly performed the teacher reviews that single motionand then continues with the rest of the sequence.Two main questions have to be addressed in order to adaptthe performance of the task to the user’s cognitive and phys-ical capabilities: (i) movement selection, i.e., which move-ments to include in the choreography and (ii) performanceevaluation, i.e., how well the user has performed. In bothcases we need to define metrics that will allow the robot todetermine those movements that the user is able to perform(or would be able after practice) based on their complexityand to evaluate the user’s performance within his/her ownlimitations.Based on the literature on fundamental motor skills devel-opment [2, 1, 3] and after discussion with professional danceteachers2 we propose the following measures:• balance: how much effort is needed to balance the bodyto not to fall from a given position (e.g. two feet, one2Language of Dance Centre (London, UK) and Scuola didanza Ida Petrullo (Costamasnaga, Italy).Preprint version; final version available at dl.acm.orgHRI'11 (2011), pp: 235-236DOI: 10.1145/1957656.1957748foot). Jumps correspond to a specific type of balancewhere there is no support during a short period of time.• flexibility : how forced are the body joints when per-forming the motion (e.g. lean forward, somersault).• layered movement : number of body parts moving indifferent ways (e.g. moving the arms and the legs atthe same time would correspond to two layers). Thismeasure can also be seen as self-coordination, wherethe coordination of the different body parts its morecomplex as more parts are implied.• synchronization: synchronizing the self-movements withother partners (robot, other users).• strength: how much strength from a body part is re-quired to perform the motion (e.g. elevating the legrequires a strength in the thigh).• speed : how fast the movement is performed. Somemovements may be easier when being performed fast(lifting a leg), while others, when being performed slow(moving different body parts at the same time).While the measures described above characterize move-ments individually, the following measures can determinethe complexity of the overall choreography:• recall : number of different movements the dance iscomposed of. The more movements it is composed of,the harder it will be to memorize.• rhythm: following the rhythm is more complex thanjust performing the movements at any pace.3. ADAPTING THE INTERACTIONFollowing the general ALIZ-E project methodology, affec-tive aspects including personality and emotions will be con-sidered for achieving an adaptive robot behavior in orderto persuade and guide the user when performing the task.Based on the current state of the art (e.g. [4, 5]) we plan toadapt the following key-points in the teaching methodology:• movement selection: the complexity of the movementsvaries from “easy” to perform to very “challenging”within the user’s capabilities. Based on the user per-sonality traits the robot may start the activity withsimpler movements or with more challenging ones.• performance evaluation: we define parameterized eval-uation metrics that will allow to obtain outcomes rang-ing from “flexible”, where a minimum effort of repro-ducing the motion will produce a positive evaluation,to “strict”, where only correct motions, from a techni-cal point of view, will be considered a success.• feedback : different types of feedback should be pro-vided to the user to assist the learning stage of themovements and the recalling phase when memorizingthe dance sequences. Based on his/her cognitive ca-pabilities verbal descriptions of the movements can begiven in a technical way (e.g. raise both arms extend-ing your arms to the maximum); in a pictorial fashion(e.g. stretch your arms as if you were trying to touchthe sky); comparing movements with well known char-acters (e.g. fly like Superman); or even providing vi-sual images (in this case additional resources as cardswith pictures or a screen can be used).Moreover, variations during the dance session are essen-tial based on the current emotional state of the user. Thus,besides taking into account the general user’s personalitytraits, in the project we also consider his/her current emo-tional state to fine tune the way the session will take placeaccording to the aforementioned aspects, as well as the du-ration of the session (probably shorter sessions are more ap-propriate for non-motivated users).4. CONCLUSIONA first experience with two children (7 and 11-years-old,both girls) has been performed with the Nao robot. Theaim was to observe a first interaction of the dancing robotwith them. The choreography has been designed by a danceteacher, and a short version of it (45 sec.) was tested withthe children. It included four main movements: rangingfrom simple arm movements (single layer motion) to combi-nation of arms and legs (layered motion), and two balancingmotions (lifting one leg to the side). The dance includedmusic, although for this first essay following the rhythm wasnot required. Both children enjoyed the session and did notget bored (even if the robot crashed at some point havingto initialize it again).We have confirmed the need of designing adaptable evalu-ation metrics, not only to base them on each person’s capa-bilities, but also to consider differences on the robot’s mo-tions and the user’s ones (e.g. closing the legs sliding is easyfor the robot, but it seemed hard for the children to repro-duce it –probably because the shoes were not appropriateas well–). Regarding the feedback provided to the user, therobot should dance along with the child and not only ob-serve how he/she is doing after showing the motion for thefirst time. Children seem to mirror the robot’s actions, andif it stops, the children stopped as well. Thus, giving con-tinuous feedback (specially visual) will improve the child’scomprehension about the action to perform, and will alsoincrease his/her self-confidence for dancing.5. REFERENCES[1] I. E. V. Rossberg-Gempton, J. Dickinson, andG. Poole, “Creative dance: Potentiality for enhancingsocial functioning in frail seniors and young children,”The Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 26, pp. 313–327, 1999.[2] T. I. Hilgenkamp, R. van Wijck, and H. M. Evenhuis,“Physical fitness in older people with id-concept andmeasuring instruments: A review,” Research inDevelop. Disabilities, vol. 31, pp. 1027–1038, 2010.[3] B. Hands, “Changes in motor skill and fitness measuresamong children with high and low motor competence:A five-year longitudinal study,” Journal of Science andMedicine in Sport, vol. 11, pp. 155–162, 2008.[4] R. Looije, M. A. Neerincx, and F. Cnossen, “Persuasiverobotic assistant for health self-management of olderadults: Design and evaluation of social behaviors,” Int.J. Hum.-Comput. Stud., vol. 68, pp. 386–397, 2010.[5] A. Tapus and M. J. Matarić, “Socially assistive robots:The link between personality, empathy, physiologicalsignals, and task performance,” in AAAI, 2007.Preprint version; final version available at dl.acm.orgHRI'11 (2011), pp: 235-236DOI: 10.1145/1957656.1957748

Changes in motor skill and  measures among children with high and low motor competence: A  longitudinal study,&quot;

Creative dance: Potentiality for enhancing social functioning in frail seniors and young children,&quot;

Matari c, \Socially assistive robots: The link between personality, empathy, physiological signals, and task performance,&quot;

Persuasive robotic assistant for health self-management of older adults: Design and evaluation of social behaviors,&quot;

Physical  in older people with id-concept and measuring instruments: A review,&quot;

Adapting robot behavior to user's capabilities: a dance instruction study.

Adapting robot behavior to user's capabilities: a dance instruction study.

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