Social Robots and Wearable Sensors for Mitigating Meltdowns in Autism - A Pilot Test

Cabibihan, John-John; Chellali, Ryad; So, Wing-Chee; Aldosari, Mohammad; Connor, Olcay; Alhaddad, Ahmad Yaser; Javed, Hifza

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_11

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, the presence of social robots could pose a risk during the exhibition of challenging behaviors, such as throwing objects, hitting, banging on objects, and kicking objects [38]. Children showed some aggression toward the robots as reported in previous studies [6,14,19]. For smaller companion robots, children might pick it up and mishandle it (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Influence of Reaction Time in the Emotional Response of a Companion Robot to a Child’s Aggressive Interaction

Alhaddad

Cabibihan

Bonarini

2020

Int J of Soc Robotics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The quality of a companion robot’s reaction is important to make it acceptable to the users and to sustain interactions. Furthermore, the robot’s reaction can be used to train socially acceptable behaviors and to develop certain skills in both normally developing children and children with cognitive disabilities. In this study, we investigate the influence of reaction time in the emotional response of a robot when children display aggressive interactions toward it. Different interactions were considered, namely, pickup, shake, drop and throw. The robot produced responses as audible sounds, which were activated at three different reaction times, namely, 0.5 s, 1.0 s, and 1.5 s. The results for one of the tasks that involved shaking the robotic toys produced a significant difference between the timings tested. This could imply that producing a late response to an action (i.e. greater than 1.0 s) could negatively affect the children’s comprehension of the intended message. Furthermore, the response should be comprehensible to provide a clear message to the user. The results imply that the designers of companion robotic toys need to consider an appropriate timing and clear modality for their robots’ responses.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Influence of Reaction Time in the Emotional Response of a Companion Robot to a Child’s Aggressive Interaction

Alhaddad

Cabibihan

Bonarini

2020

Int J of Soc Robotics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The robot can then be programmed to deliver an appropriate response. These findings can be considered as a contribute toward improved therapy sessions by anticipating some unwanted interactions and then preventing the occurrence or progression of challenging behaviors by the intervention of a human therapist or the social robot itself [15].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…throwing objects at others, kicking objects, hitting oneself, and banging on objects [2]). Previous studies showed that children might exhibit some aggression toward the robots [13], [14], [15]. In case of small robots, children might carry the robot and mishandle it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Recognition of Aggressive Interactions of Children Toward Robotic Toys

Alhaddad

Cabibihan

Bonarini

2019

2019 28th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social robots are being considered to be a part of the therapy of children with autism. During the interaction, some aggressive behaviors could lead to harmful scenarios. The ability of a social robot to detect such behaviors and react to intervene or notify the therapist would improve the outcomes of therapy and prevent any potential harm toward another person or to the robot. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of the Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network in classifying 6 interaction behaviors between a child and a small social robot. The behaviors were hit, shake, throw, pickup, drop, and no interaction or idle. Due to the ease of acquiring data from adult participants, model was developed based on adults' data and evaluated with children's data. The developed model was able to achieve promising results based on the accuracy (i.e. 80%), classification report (i.e. overall F1-score = 80%), and confusion matrix. The findings highlight the potential of neural networks to characterize children interactions with social robots to improve safety in therapy.

show abstract

“…The introduction of robots to children with ASD represents new challenge that must be taken into account. For example, children interacting with social robots might show some aggression [8,14,25]. Furthermore, robots are meant to elicit behaviors [19,21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of the shape and mass of a small robot when thrown to a dummy human head

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social robots have shown some efficacy in assisting children with autism and are now being considered as assistive tools for therapy. The physical proximity of a small companion social robot could become a source of harm to children with autism during aggressive physical interactions. A child exhibiting challenging behaviors could throw a small robot that could harm another child's head upon impact. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the mass and shape of objects thrown on impact at different velocities on the linear acceleration of a developed dummy head. This dummy head could be the head of another child or a caregiver in the room. A total of 27 main experiments were conducted based on Taguchi's orthogonal array design. The data were then analyzed using ANOVA and then optimized based on the signalto-noise ratio. Our results revealed that the two design factors considered (i.e. mass and shape) and the noise factor (i.e. impact velocities) affected the response. Finally, confirmation runs at the optimal identified shape and mass (i.e. mass of 0.3 kg and shape of either cube or wedge) showed an overall reduction in the resultant peak linear acceleration of the dummy head as compared to the other conditions. These results have implications on the design and manufacturing of small social robots whereby minimizing the mass of the robots can aid in mitigating the potential harm to the head due to impacts.

show abstract

Social Robots and Wearable Sensors for Mitigating Meltdowns in Autism - A Pilot Test

Cited by 15 publications

References 43 publications

Influence of Reaction Time in the Emotional Response of a Companion Robot to a Child’s Aggressive Interaction

Influence of Reaction Time in the Emotional Response of a Companion Robot to a Child’s Aggressive Interaction

Recognition of Aggressive Interactions of Children Toward Robotic Toys

Influence of the shape and mass of a small robot when thrown to a dummy human head

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About