Robot-Enhanced Therapy: Development and Validation of Supervised Autonomous Robotic System for Autism Spectrum Disorders Therapy

Cao, Hoang-Long; Esteban, Pablo Gómez; Bartlett, Madeleine; Baxter, Paul; Belpaeme, Tony; Billing, Erik; Cai, Haibin; Coeckelbergh, Mark; Costescu, Cristina; David, Daniel; Beir, Albert De; Hernández, Daniel; Kennedy, James; Liu, Honghai; Matu, Silviu; Mazel, Alexandre; Pandey, Amit Kumar; Richardson, Kathleen; Senft, Emmanuel; Thill, Serge; Perre, Greet Van de; Vanderborght, Bram; Vernon, David; Wakanuma, Kutoma; Yu, Hui; Zhou, Xiaolong; Ziemke, Tom

doi:10.1109/mra.2019.2904121

Cited by 64 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Apart from being a potentially helpful resource in an interaction between the child and the robot, caregivers can also fulfil the role of monitoring the interactive behaviors of the robot [59,60]. In fact, from the field of Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT), it is known that a joint triadic interaction between caregiver, child and robot is preferred by parents, teachers, and therapists compared to a mere interaction between a robot and a child [52].…”

Section: Role Of the Caregivermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, from the field of Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT), it is known that a joint triadic interaction between caregiver, child and robot is preferred by parents, teachers, and therapists compared to a mere interaction between a robot and a child [52]. In this regard, recently, Cao and colleagues lent further substance to the role of the caregiver in child-robot interactions by introducing a supervised autonomous robotic system that can be operated by nonexperts [59]. The authors implemented a robotic system that allowed the supervisor to control the robot's actions before they were performed to ensure that only therapeutically valuable actions were executed [59].…”

Section: Role Of the Caregivermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this regard, recently, Cao and colleagues lent further substance to the role of the caregiver in child-robot interactions by introducing a supervised autonomous robotic system that can be operated by nonexperts [59]. The authors implemented a robotic system that allowed the supervisor to control the robot's actions before they were performed to ensure that only therapeutically valuable actions were executed [59]. Such an approach could also be feasible in nonclinical contexts, which would mitigate the technological bottlenecks that prevent contingent interactions and involve the caregiver in ensuring that the use of the robot is more adjusted to the pedagogical concepts and institutional practices at the kindergarten.…”

Section: Role Of the Caregivermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ethical Considerations of Applying Robots in Kindergarten Settings: Towards an Approach from a Macroperspective

Tolksdorf

Siebert

Zorn

et al. 2020

Int J of Soc Robotics

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In child-robot interaction (cHRI) research, many studies pursue the goal to develop interactive systems that can be applied in everyday settings. For early education, increasingly, the setting of a kindergarten is targeted. However, when cHRI and research are brought into a kindergarten, a range of ethical and related procedural aspects have to be considered and dealt with. While ethical models elaborated within other human-robot interaction settings, e.g., assisted living contexts, can provide some important indicators for relevant issues, we argue that it is important to start developing a systematic approach to identify and tackle those ethical issues which rise with cHRI in kindergarten settings on a more global level and address the impact of the technology from a macroperspective beyond the effects on the individual. Based on our experience in conducting studies with children in general and pedagogical considerations on the role of the institution of kindergarten in specific, in this paper, we enfold some relevant aspects that have barely been addressed in an explicit way in current cHRI research. Four areas are analyzed and key ethical issues are identified in each area: (1) the institutional setting of a kindergarten, (2) children as a vulnerable group, (3) the caregivers' role, and (4) pedagogical concepts. With our considerations, we aim at (i) broadening the methodology of the current studies within the area of cHRI, (ii) revalidate it based on our comprehensive empirical experience with research in kindergarten settings, both laboratory and real-world contexts, and (iii) provide a framework for the development of a more systematic approach to address the ethical issues in cHRI research within kindergarten settings.

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Section: Role Of the Caregivermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Role Of the Caregivermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Role Of the Caregivermentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Ethical Considerations of Applying Robots in Kindergarten Settings: Towards an Approach from a Macroperspective

Tolksdorf

Siebert

Zorn

et al. 2020

Int J of Soc Robotics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is noteworthy that relatively little is actually required of the robots themselves in such studies, and a Wizard-of-Oz control paradigm is sufficient. Applications of social robots that do require the robot to possess at least some autonomous behaviour exist, for example in education [10] or robot-assisted therapy for disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder [11][12][13], but these are still relatively narrow domains within social robotics.…”

Section: Recognising Human Internal States From Observable Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Requirements for Robotic Interpretation of Social Signals “in the Wild”: Insights from Diagnostic Criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorder

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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The last few decades have seen widespread advances in technological means to characterise observable aspects of human behaviour such as gaze or posture. Among others, these developments have also led to significant advances in social robotics. At the same time, however, social robots are still largely evaluated in idealised or laboratory conditions, and it remains unclear whether the technological progress is sufficient to let such robots move “into the wild”. In this paper, we characterise the problems that a social robot in the real world may face, and review the technological state of the art in terms of addressing these. We do this by considering what it would entail to automate the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Just as for social robotics, ASD diagnosis fundamentally requires the ability to characterise human behaviour from observable aspects. However, therapists provide clear criteria regarding what to look for. As such, ASD diagnosis is a situation that is both relevant to real-world social robotics and comes with clear metrics. Overall, we demonstrate that even with relatively clear therapist-provided criteria and current technological progress, the need to interpret covert behaviour cannot yet be fully addressed. Our discussions have clear implications for ASD diagnosis, but also for social robotics more generally. For ASD diagnosis, we provide a classification of criteria based on whether or not they depend on covert information and highlight present-day possibilities for supporting therapists in diagnosis through technological means. For social robotics, we highlight the fundamental role of covert behaviour, show that the current state-of-the-art is unable to characterise this, and emphasise that future research should tackle this explicitly in realistic settings.

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“…Socially interactive robots are designed to interact with people by perceiving the complex surrounding environment and expressing verbal and nonverbal behaviors using speech, facial expressions, paralanguage, and body language [1,2]. These robots are expected to be present in many domestic applications including education [3,4], healthcare [5][6][7][8][9], and museum guidance [10,11] due to their abilities to engage, entertain, and enlighten people [1]. These social abilities enable the robots to be perceived as trusting, helpful, reliable, and importantly, engaging [12], which are essential traits for a harmonic human-robot coexistence and an effective human-robot interaction (HRI) [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Hmm, Did You Hear What I Just Said?”: Development of a Re-Engagement System for Socially Interactive Robots

et al. 2019

Self Cite

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Maintaining engagement is challenging in human–human interaction. When disengagements happen, people try to adapt their behavior with an expectation that engagement will be regained. In human–robot interaction, although socially interactive robots are engaging, people can easily drop engagement while interacting with robots. This paper proposes a multi-layer re-engagement system that applies different strategies through human-like verbal and non-verbal behaviors to regain user engagement, taking into account the user’s attention level and affective states. We conducted a usability test in a robot storytelling scenario to demonstrate technical operation of the system as well as to investigate how people react when interacting with a robot with re-engagement ability. Our usability test results reveal that the system has the potential to maintain a user’s engagement. Our selected users gave positive comments, through open-ended questions, to the robot with this ability. They also rated the robot with the re-engagement ability higher on several dimensions, i.e., animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence.

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Robot-Enhanced Therapy: Development and Validation of Supervised Autonomous Robotic System for Autism Spectrum Disorders Therapy

Cited by 64 publications

References 22 publications

Ethical Considerations of Applying Robots in Kindergarten Settings: Towards an Approach from a Macroperspective

Ethical Considerations of Applying Robots in Kindergarten Settings: Towards an Approach from a Macroperspective

Requirements for Robotic Interpretation of Social Signals “in the Wild”: Insights from Diagnostic Criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorder

“Hmm, Did You Hear What I Just Said?”: Development of a Re-Engagement System for Socially Interactive Robots

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