Verbal guidance for sit-to-stand support system

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based robots have become popular in various fields, thereby increasing the demand for care robots. Such care robots recognize or estimate factors such as human states and then perform actions depending on the estimation results. If the humans cooperating with robots do not understand robot functions well, the task will not be performed appropriately. Additionally, it is possible that the estimation may be incorrect. Robots may make mistakes, and there is a risk that these mistakes may not be understood by humans. In such cases, robots are not useful, and this may hinder the cooperation between humans and robots. There are several ways to deal with this issue including improving estimation and information representation. We can know what is important to design care robots by analyzing the influence of factors including accurate estimation and contents and timing of information representation. We developed a robot for analysis that can support a human during standing, by raising its armrest. The developed robot raises its armrest when the user leans on it. In the nursing-care field, verbal communication is important. Hence, we also adopt a verbal guidance for information representation. Verbal guidance to encourage a user to stand up and countdown timer representations are adopted. Initially, an experiment is conducted to validate the usability of the system that acts according to considerably accurate estimations. The experimental results show that system without verbal guidance causes anxiety to humans and the system becomes not useful, even if the human state is detected accurately. Furthermore, we determine the appropriate content and timing of verbal guidance based on the results. Subsequently, we conduct an experiment to confirm that the proposed method is applicable under imperfect estimations.

Experimental validation of elderly support robot integrated with knowledge representation interface

“…In addition, because the robot will stop and return to its original position when it detects an anomaly, the announcement of the stop, the announcement that "It will back up," and the countdown it executes before moving the armrest clearly declare the next action of the robot so that the user can respond to an anomaly with a sense of ease. In a previous study [17], presenting information via a speaker while the user is standing up was found to have a significant impact on the sense of ease and usability of the robot. However, experiments to support standing up, walking, and sitting down, including anomalies found during those movements, in combination with visual information presented on a display were not conducted.…”

“…By presenting the robot's actions, timing, and other information on a visual interface and through speakers, the robot will be theoretically easy to use and generate a sense of ease. The robot's actions and the user's next move are useful information that can be presented to the user [8], and audio presentation of the timing of the actions has proven to be effective [17]. Therefore, we designed the display to show the current state and next move of the user and robot on the screen, and set up the audio to announce the timing and the user's move.…”

Technical Challenges for Smooth Interaction With Seniors With Dementia: Lessons From Humanitude™

“…Many efforts have investigated using robots for assisting seniors to stand and walk on their own, which is a major goal of Humanitude ( Martins et al, 2012 ; Cifuentes and Frizera, 2016 ; Geravand et al, 2017 ; Ferrari et al, 2020 ; Takeda et al, 2020 ). Robotic technologies do already exist that facilitate the standing or walking of PwDs by themselves.…”

“…For example, Takeda et al proposed a sit-to-stand support system that informed users by verbal guidance when assistance will begin. Healthy adult users felt comfortable when the start of the robot’s movement was indicated by voice ( Takeda et al, 2020 ), although they did not evaluate their system with healthy seniors or PwDs. Providing a feeling of comfort through multimodal information in standing and walking is critical for PwDs.…”

Coarse ethics: how to ethically assess explainable artificial intelligence

“…The diversity of explanations can be exemplified by the life story book, which Setchi et al [44] suggest for reminiscence therapy by robots. Another example is verbal guidance for a sit-to-stand support system [46].…”