Human-centred design methods: Developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Abstract

This article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC 1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates 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.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children's development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human-robot interactions.

A Robot Centric Perspective on the HRI Paradigm

“…Common approaches guided by this perspective (Rahimi &Karwowski, 1990 andRobins et al, 2010 for example) see the human as central in the interaction paradigm; the human leads the interaction, communicates the task to be done and defines the intentionality of the situation. Conversely, the robot is a passive, albeit intelligent, participant at this level of the interaction and is the Task Completer; which is problematic for social robotics.…”

Continuous real time POMCP to find-and-follow people by a humanoid service robot

“…Therefore, prior research in this particular field is relatively minimal [2]. Most of the current research studies robots that participate in social human interactions as companions [3]. Find-andfollow is a multidisciplinary field of robotics in which a mixture of subjects such as perception, robot navigation and HRI intervenes.…”

A Preliminary Study on the Response of Autistic Persons to a Robot Feedback based on Visual Stimuli

“…Various research studies have shown that autistic children' s attention can be engaged better when they communicate with a robot rather than with a human [1,2]. These findings led to the development of new therapeutic approaches where robots are used as mediators.…”