This article presents a novel set of ten play scenarios for robot-assisted play for children with special needs. This set of scenarios is one of the key outcomes of the IROMEC project that investigated how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents etc.). The target user groups in the project were children with Mild Mental Retardation, 1 children with Severe Motor Impairment and children with Autism. The play scenarios were developed against specific educational and therapeutic objectives that were discussed with panels of experts (teachers, therapists, parents) in various countries, during several user panel meetings for each of the above mentioned target user groups. These objectives were classified with reference to the ICF-CY, the International Classification of Functioningversion for Children and Youth. The article presents a detailed description of the play scenarios, each with its relevant educational and therapeutic objectives in five key developmental areas (i.e. sensory development, communication and interaction, cognitive development, motor development and social and emotional development). While the play scenarios described in this paper originally were developed for and tested with the above user groups and with the IROMEC robot, the play scenarios can potentially be applied to other user groups and to a wide range of other applications involving human-robot interaction using different robotic toys.

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We present a design case focusing on participatory design (PD) with older people. We experimented with PD techniques to foster engagement with participants in development of a graphical user interface (GUI) for controlling a robotic system in a smart home environment. The tenet of our approach is that to engage older people in the design of future systems, it is of paramount importance to increment and reinforce knowledge using different techniques and materials, and to create an empathic and trusted relationship between participants and designers. We experimented with different techniques for achieving this, from videobased scenario evaluation to hands-on and gaming activity in which participants had to evaluate the dynamics of a context-dependent interface using an expression-rich modality of interaction. This permitted exploration of experiential elements of design, to reduce the need for the participants to engage in abstract thought and to collect insights on design solutions while having fun together. The entire procedure implied incremental PD cycles in which knowledge was shared and consolidated through a learning process based on doing and playing together. The final reflections highlight a number of recommendations that demand consideration when undertaking research and design work with older peopl

With changes in life expectancy across the world, technologies enhancing well-being of individuals, specifically for older people, are subject to a new stream of research and development. In this paper we present the ACCOMPANY project, a pan-European project which focuses on home companion technologies. The projects aims to progress beyond the state of the art in multiple areas such as empathic and social humanrobot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, monitoring persons and chores at home, and technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot R 3, and in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. The resulting prototype from integrating these developments undergoes multiple formative cycles and a summative evaluation cycle towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot for example role as a butler or a trainer. Furthermore, the evaluation activities will use an evaluation grid in order to assess achievement of the identified user requirements, formulated in form of distinct scenarios. Finally, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cyclesThe work described in this project was partially funded by the European project ACCOMPANY (Acceptable robotics COMPanions for AgeiNg Years). Grant agreement no.: 287624.

This paper describes a study conducted in a Care Home with six women affected by dementia. The study focused on storytelling and compared the effect of the seal robot PARO with Sugar, a toy looking like a baby seal, in stimulating the creation of stories either based on personal memories or invented by the person