Socially Assistive Robotics

The present case study investigated the effect of applying a humanoid robot as a teacher assistant to teach a foreign language (English in this case) to Iranian children with autism. To do this, there were 4 male autistic children, 7–9 years old, 3 with high-functioning autism and one with low-functioning autism. The humanoid robot NAO was used as the main instrument of this study. There were 12 sessions including 10 teaching sessions. This study used a pre-test, mid-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test design to measure the learning gains of the autistic children participating in the robot-assisted language learning (RALL) program. The results showed the subjects’ large learning gains which were fairly persistent according to their performances on the delayed post-test. The difference observed between the learning gains of the high-functioning and low-functioning participants is also discussed.

Social robots not only work with humans in collaborative workspaces – we meet them in shopping malls and even more personal settings like health and care. Does this imply they should become more human, able to interpret and adequately respond to human emotions? Do we want them to help elderly persons? Do we want them to support us when we are old ourselves? Do we want them to just clean and keep things orderly – or would we accept them helping us to go to the toilet, or even feed us if we suffer from Parkinson’s disease?

The answers to these questions differ from person to person. They depend on cultural background, personal experiences – but probably most of all on the robot in question. This book covers the phenomenon of social robots from the historic roots to today’s best practices and future perspectives. To achieve this, we used a hands-on, interdisciplinary approach, incorporating findings from computer scientists, engineers, designers, psychologists, doctors, nurses, historians and many more. The book also covers a vast spectrum of applications, from collaborative industrial work over education to sales. Especially for developments with a high societal impact like robots in health and care settings, the authors discuss not only technology, design and usage but also ethical aspects.

Thus this book creates both a compendium and a guideline, helping to navigate the design space for future developments in social robotics.

[this is the developed version of conference speech "Cain inanimate objects be more sexually attractive than people?" expanded with the hypothesis of return of magical thinking as an explanation of anthropomorphizing attitude towards robots]
This chapter elaborates on the issue of loving dolls and robots. The topic has been already broadly discussed by academics representing diverse disciplines as well as implemented into mass culture – mainly due to the fact that people who have strong affections towards inanimate objects are already a part of reality and cannot be perceived as a matter of distant future or a part of some science-fiction scenario anymore. On the one hand, the chapter delivers a claim that people who engage into intimate relationships with inanimate objects cannot be seen simply as crazy social outcasts, since their activity is a result of tendencies and processes that are prevalent in contemporary Western culture. In other words, the chapter argues that doll lovers and robot lovers are not following some other path than the rest of society – not only do they pursue in the same direction but they also might be simply few steps ahead. On the other hand, it is argued that further continuation of that journey involves some serious risks. In other words, the fact that we are all heading in this direction, does not mean that the direction is appropriate. The main risk is that the solipsist who create their own subjective worlds in search for personal freedom will tend to objectify other human beings and in the end they will find themselves imprisoned in a kind of autistic reality. Finally, the paper presents hypothesis that the mental processes that are connected with intimate relationships with inanimate objects are – in specific sense – connected with return of magical thinking typical for so called primitive cultures. The analyses refer not only to philosophical, psychological and sociological studies but also to popular culture, e.g. to a documentary movie Guys and Dolls and a specific episode of TV series House M.D.

Robots today are working in both industrial and service sectors. Robots have evolved from one-function automatons to intelligent systems of versatile features, and the new generation of service robots are sharing same space and tasks with humans. The aim of this systematic literature review was to examine how the social acceptance of robots in different occupational fields has been studied and what kinds of attitudes the studies have discovered regarding robots as workers. The data were collected in October 2016 from four major bibliographic databases. Preliminary search results included 336 research articles from which 42 were selected to the final research through inclusion criteria. Of the studies, 69 percent concerned robots working in health and social services. Positive attitudes occurred more frequently in studies exposing participants to robots. Robots were considered appropriate for different work tasks. Telepresence robots were highly approved by health care staff. The criticism was directed to decreasing human contact and unnecessary deployment of new technology. Our results imply that attitudes toward robots are positive in many fields of work. Yet there is a need for validated measures and nationally representative data that would help us to further our understanding of social acceptance of robots in work.

Purpose of Review: We provide an outlook on the definitions, laboratory research, and applications of social robots, with an aim to understand what makes a robot social-in the eyes of science and the general public. Recent Findings: Social robots demonstrate their potential when deployed within contexts appropriate to their form and functions. Some examples include companions for the elderly and cognitively impaired individuals, robots within educational settings, and as tools to support cognitive and behavioural change interventions.
Summary: Science fiction has inspired us to conceive of a future with autonomous robots helping with every aspect of our daily lives, although the robots we are familiar with through film and literature remain a vision of the distant future. While there are still miles to go before robots become a regular feature within our social spaces, rapid progress in social robotics research, aided by the social sciences, is helping to move us closer to this reality.

Reciprocal interaction and facial expression are some of the most interesting topics in the fields of social and cognitive robotics. On the other hand, children with autism show a particular interest toward robots, and facial expression recognition can improve these children's social interaction abilities in real life. In this research, a robotic platform has been developed for reciprocal interaction consisting of two main phases, namely as Non-structured and Structured interaction modes. In the Non-structured interaction mode, a vision system recognizes the facial expressions of the user through a fuzzy clustering method. The interaction decision-making unit is combined with a fuzzy finite state machine to improve the quality of human– robot interaction by utilizing the results obtained from the facial expression analysis. In the Structured interaction mode, a set of imitation scenarios with eight different posed facial behaviors were designed for the robot. As a pilot study, the effect and acceptability of our platform have been investigated on autistic children between 3 and 7 years old and the preliminary acceptance rate of ∼ 78% is observed in our experimental conditions. The scenarios start with simple facial expressions and get more complicated as they continue. The same vision system and fuzzy clustering method of the Non-structured interaction mode are used for automatic evaluation of a participant's gestures. Lastly, the automatic assessment of imitation quality was compared with the manual video coding results. The Pearson's r on these equivalent grades were computed as r = 0.89 which shows a sufficient agreement on the automatic and manual scores.

Resource Person: Dimitrios A.Karras

Dimitrios A. Karras received his Diploma and M.Sc. Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece in 1985 and the Ph. Degree in Electrical Engineering, from the NTUA, Greece in 1995, with honours. From 1990 and up to 2004 he collaborated as visiting professor and researcher with several universities and research institutes in Greece. Since 2004 he has been with the Sterea Hellas Institute of Technology, Automation Dept., Greece as associate professor in Digital Systems and Signal Processing, till 12/2018, as well as with the Hellenic Open University, Dept. Informatics as a visiting professor in Communication Systems (the latter since 2002 and up to 2010). Since 1/2019 is Associate Prof. in Digital Systems and Intelligent Systems, Signal Processing , in National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, School of Science, Dept. General. He is, also, adjunct professor with GLA University. Mathura, India and BIHER, BHARATH univ. India as well as with EPOKA and CIT universities Tirana. Moreover, he is with AICO EDV-Beratung GmbH as senior researcher as well as Director of Research and Documentation at ADIafrica N. G. O. He has published more than 70 research refereed journal papers in various areas of pattern recognition, image/signal processing and neural networks as well as in bioinformatics and more than 185 research papers in International refereed scientific Conferences. His research interests span the fields of pattern recognition and neural networks, image and signal processing, image and signal systems, biomedical systems, communications, networking and security. He has served as program committee member in many international conferences, as well as program chair and general chair in several international workshops and conferences in the fields of signal, image, communication and automation systems. He is, also, former editor in chief (2008-2016) of the International Journal in Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering (IJSISE), academic editor in the TWSJ, ISRN Communications and the Applied Mathematics Hindawi journals as well as associate editor in various scientific journals. He has been cited in more than 2469 research papers (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IxQurTMAAAAJ&hl=en), his H/G-indices are 20/50 (Google Scholar) and his Erdos number is 5. His RG score is 31.66

Socially assistive robotics is an important emerging research area. Socially assistive robotics is challenging as it is required to move robots out of laboratories and industrial settings to interact with ordinary human beings as peers, which requires social skills. The design process usually requires multidisciplinary research teams, which may comprise subject matter experts from various domains such as robotics, systems integration, medicine, psychology, gerontology, social and cognitive sciences, and neuroscience, among many others. Unlike most other robotic applications, socially assistive robotics faces some unique software and systems integration challenges. In this paper, the HealthBot robot architecture, which was designed to overcome these challenges, is presented. The presented architecture was implemented and used in several field trials. The details of the field trials are presented, and lessons learned are discussed with field trial results.

This paper introduces a novel robotic platform, called RASA (Robot Assistant for Social Aims). This educational social
robot is designed and constructed to facilitate teaching Persian Sign Language (PSL) to children with hearing disabilities.
There are three predominant characteristics from which design guidelines of the robot are generated. First, the robot is
designed as a fully functional interactive social robot with children as its social service recipients. Second, it comes with the
ability to perform PSL, which demands a dexterous upper-body of 29 actuated degrees of freedom. Third, it has a relatively
low development cost for a robot in its category. This funded project, addresses the challenges resulting from the at times
divergent requirements of these characteristics. Accordingly, the hardware design of the robot is discussed, and an evaluation
of its sign language realization performance has been carried out. The inspected recognition rates of certain signs of PSL,
performed by RASA, have also been reported.

The present case study investigated the effect of applying a humanoid robot as a teacher assistant to teach a foreign language (English in this case) to Iranian children with autism.
To do this, there were 4 male autistic children, 7–9 years old, 3 with high-functioning autism and one with low-functioning autism. The humanoid robot NAO was used as the main
instrument of this study. There were 12 sessions including 10
teaching sessions. This study used a pre-test, mid-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test design to
measure the learning gains of the autistic children participating
in the robot-assisted language learning (RALL) program. The
results showed the subjects’ large learning gains which were fairly persistent according to their performances on the  delayed post-test. The difference observed between the learning gains of the high-functioning and low-functioning
participants is also discussed.

Keywords: Humanoid robot · Autism · High-functioning · Foreign la

As a consequence of modern medicine and modern style of living, two demographic trends, namely longevity and a decline in fertility have greatly increased the aging population. The number of older persons aged 60 years or over is expected to be 1.4 billion by 2030 (World Population Data 2017). This demographic change combined with changes in family structure challenges the future of elderly care, and contributes to grounding a case towards the use of advanced robotics and AI to either integrate or radically replace human-provided services in this field. This paper introduces an anthropocentric framework-as defined by the Euro-pean Commission in its 2018 Communication on AI-for the care of elderly individuals through assistive robotic technologies. Firstly, the concepts of care and cure are distinguished, followed by a critical analysis of the function of robots in the context of care. The paper continues with an analysis of the aforesaid technologies with the notion of care provided to highlight that machines have the potential to interact and simulate a relationship, but not to establish a real meaningful one with the user. Us-er's deception and deprivation of a meaningful care-relationship is discussed as a potential risk emerging from an incorrect use of technology in the treatment of fragile individuals, and the fundamental legal principle of human dignity is considered with respect to its potential application and impact on policies in this domain, as an objective criterion that poses limits also to the individual's freedom of self-determination.

Recent research showed the potential benefits of robot-assisted therapy in treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. These children often have some form of Intellectual Disability (ID) too, but this has mainly been neglected by previous robotics research. This article presents an empirical evaluation of robot-assisted imitation training integrated into the TEACCH program. The sample included six hospitalised children with different levels of ID, from mild to profound. We applied mixed-methods to assess their progress, during treatment and three months later. Results show increased Gross Motor Imitation skills in the children, except for those with profound ID and the therapists' positive attitude towards the humanoid robot. Furthermore, the therapists suggest how a robot could be used to autonomously collect and analyse the information obtained in the rehabilitation training for a continuous evaluation of the participants.

Background: Being able to maintain personal hygiene plays a crucial role for independent living in old age or suffering from disabilities. Within the European project I-SUPPORT an intelligent robotic shower system is being developed, which enables to shower independently at home or in institutionalized settings.
Objectives: The aim of this contribution is the identification of ethical issues in the development of a robotic shower system utilizing the Model for the Ethical Evaluation of Socio-Technical Arrangements (MEESTAR).
Materials and methods: In I-SUPPORT a variety of concepts and methods are implemented in order to achieve technology acceptance such as user-centered requirements analysis, usability-tests and analysis of socio-cultural and ethical aspects. This contribution is on the analysis of focus groups with 14 older adults and 9 professional caregivers utilizing MEESTAR as a heuristic approach analyzing socio-technical arrangements and identifying ethical problems.
Results: MEESTAR was adapted to the research question and the client groups and implemented as a discursive method. This gave an insight into meaning and background of ethical aspects also of nursing processes as well into the requirements of the system. Shortcomings are that the ethical dimensions are not everyday language and time restrictions. In the next step a standardized assessment instrument will be developed and piloted.

One option to face the aging society is to build robots
that help old persons to stay longer at home. We present Hobbit, a robot that attempts to let users feel safe at home by preventing and detecting falls. Falling has been identified as the highest risk for older adults of getting injured so badly that they can no longer live independently at home and have to move to a care facility. hobbit is intended to provide high usability and acceptability for the target user group while, at the same time, needs to be affordable for private customers. The development process so far (1.5 years) included a thorough user requirement analysis, conceptual interaction design, prototyping and implementation of key behaviors, as well as extensive empirical testing with target users in the laboratory. We shortly describe the overall interdisciplinary decision-making and conceptualization of the robot and will then focus on the system itself describing the hardware, basic components, and the robot tasks. Finally, we will summarize the findings of the first empirical test with 49 users in three countries and give an outlook of how the  platform will be extended in future.

In this paper, we assess the current situation in the Gulf States with respect to autism awareness and diagnostic facilities, and emphasize the need for epidemiology studies in light of prevalence statistics available for the Gulf region. We then inspect social robotics as a possible therapeutic tool, now popularly used in the western countries, to design intervention techniques in order to tackle the increasing rate of autism occurrence in the Gulf. We study effective robot design methodologies, and the measures that must be taken to improve the facilities in the said region.

As social robots are introduced into increasingly more health interventions, one potential area where they might prove valuable is in supporting people's psychological health through conversation. Given the importance of self-disclosure for psychological health, this study assessed the viability of using social robots for eliciting rich disclosures that identify needs and emotional states in human interaction partners. Three within-subjects experiments were conducted with participants interacting with another person, a humanoid social robot, and a disembodied conversational agent (voice assistant). We performed a number of objective evaluations of disclosures to these three agents via speech content and voice analyses, and also probed participants' subjective evaluations of their disclosure to the three agents. Our findings suggest that participants overall disclose more to humans than artificial agents, that agents' embodiment influences disclosure quantity and quality,...

— Robotic wheelchairs that can move harmoniously in human spaces will be very useful for the wheelchair users, caregivers, as-well-as surrounding people. When a wheelchair is used by a handicapped or an elderly person, usually a support of a caregiver is needed either to push or guide the wheelchair. Even if the wheelchair is capable of autonomous navigation, in most cases a caregiver has to accompany a wheelchair due to health and safety reasons. When a wheelchair is accompanied by a caregiver, if the wheelchair can move in parallel to the caregiver, that might give a feeling of a normal person to the wheelchair user as human pairs normally walk in side-by-side formation. In this paper, a decision making model for obstacle avoidance in side-by-side motion of a wheelchair and a caregiver is presented. The proposed model is capable of mimicking the human decision making process in side-by-side walking. For the development of the model, data were collected from a user study. The model was validated using a simulation environment and results are presented.

Hybrid military teams, formed by human warfighters and autonomous artificial agents, represent the technological future of Defence operations. Both the potential and the inherent limitations of current technology are well-known, but the cognitive-behavioral and motivational aspects of human-robot interaction on the battlefield have yet to be systematically investigated. To lay the theoretical and methodological foundation of this scientific investigation, our position paper critically examines how the military personnel's spontaneous tendency to anthropomorphize artificial autonomous agents can affect operations of hybrid military teams in multiple ways. We will argue that the psychological impact of anthropomorphism on military personnel is neither easily avoidable nor necessarily detrimental. Correctly identifying the multi-level cognitive mechanisms that underpin implicit and explicit forms of anthropomorphism allows us to increase the efficacy of human-agent interaction. We will argue that, within hybrid teams, the capability to communicate with teammates, allies, civilians, and adversaries relies on embodied social cognition processes that are inherently geared toward anthropomorphism and leverage its effects. By updating both the design of autonomous artificial agents and the training of human troops to account for these processes, their reciprocal coordination can be augmented.

ObjectiveCompanion robots, such as Paro, may reduce agitation and depression for older people with dementia. However, contradictory research outcomes suggest robot design is not always optimal. While many researchers suggest user-centred design is important, there is little evidence on the difference this might make. Here, we aimed to assess its importance by comparing companion robot design perceptions between older people (end users) and roboticists (developers).DesignOlder people and roboticists interacted with eight companion robots or alternatives at two separate events in groups of two to four people. Interactions were recorded, participants’ comments and observations were transcribed, and content was analysed. Subsequently, each group participated in focus groups on perceptions of companion robot design. Discussions were recorded and transcribed, and content was analysed.Participants and settingsSeventeen older people (5 male, 12 female, ages 60–99) at a supported living reti...

Supply and production of multicopters has become easy thanks to technological developments. Multicopters are used in several applications based upon their high manoeuvrability, ability of still standing and easiness to product. Their increasing usage and getting supply of these devices easier have caused security and privacy troubles in terms of both military and civilian. However, it is obvious that new and major threats will be added into these troubles with current developments. In this study, military and civilian usage of multicopters in our days have been examined and these aircrafts may become threat scenarios with scientific developments and the scenarios have been presented under four titles which are aggressive manoeuvres, autonomy, positioning and localization and multi robotics. Also, determination and detection systems, defence systems and laws topics against potential threat scenarios are examined. In order to address the gaps of these topics new proposals and suggestion are presented.

Purpose of Review We provide an outlook on the definitions, laboratory research, and applications of social robots, with an aim to understand what makes a robot social—in the eyes of science and the general public. Recent Findings Social robots demonstrate their potential when deployed within contexts appropriate to their form and functions. Some examples include companions for the elderly and cognitively impaired individuals, robots within educational settings, and as tools to support cognitive and behavioural change interventions. Summary Science fiction has inspired us to conceive of a future with autonomous robots helping with every aspect of our daily lives, although the robots we are familiar with through film and literature remain a vision of the distant future. While there are still miles to go before robots become a regular feature within our social spaces, rapid progress in social robotics research, aided by the social sciences, is helping to move us closer to this reality.

This chapter will argue that artificial agents created or synthesized by technologies such as artificial life (ALife), artificial intelligence (AI), and in robotics present unique challenges to the traditional notion of moral agency and that any successful technoethics must seriously consider that these artificial agents may indeed be artificial moral agents (AMA), worthy of moral concern. This purpose will be realized by briefly describing a taxonomy of the artificial agents that these technologies are capable of producing. I will then describe how these artificial entities conflict with our standard notions of moral agency. I argue that traditional notions of moral agency are too strict even in the case of recognizably human agents and then expand the notion of moral agency such that it can sensibly include artificial agents.