Related papers: Sugar, Salt & Pepper -- Humanoid robotics for auti…
The Pepper and NAO robots are widely used for in-store advertizing and education, but also as robotic platforms for research purposes. Their presence in the academic field is expressed through various publications, multiple collaborative…
AI-assisted learning companion robots are increasingly used in early education. Many parents express concerns about content appropriateness, while they also value how AI and robots could supplement their limited skill, time, and energy to…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (autism) is a neurodevelopmental delay which affects at least 1 in 44 children. Like many neurological disorder phenotypes, the diagnostic features are observable, can be tracked over time, and can be managed or…
While augmented reality shows promise for supporting human-robot collaboration, creating such interactive systems still poses great challenges. Addressing this, we introduce ARTHUR, an open-source authoring tool for augmented…
Automated Speech Recognition shows superhuman performance for adult English speech on a range of benchmarks, but disappoints when fed children's speech. This has long sat in the way of child-robot interaction. Recent evolutions in…
This paper discusses a 5-year PhD project, focused upon the implementation of social robots for general child and family care settings in the Netherlands. The project is a collaboration with general Dutch family care organisations as well…
We aim to design robotic educational support systems that can promote socially and intellectually meaningful learning experiences for students while they complete school work outside of class. To pursue this goal, we conducted participatory…
In this paper, we present an experiment, designed to investigate and evaluate the scalability and the robustness aspects of mobile manipulation. The experiment involves performing variations of mobile pick and place actions and…
Assistive technologies and in particular assistive robotic arms have the potential to enable people with motor impairments to live a self-determined life. More and more of these systems have become available for end users in recent years,…
Social robots are increasingly being explored as tools to support emotional wellbeing, particularly in non-clinical settings. Drawing on a range of empirical studies and practical deployments, this paper outlines six key insights that…
A/B testing is widexly used in the industry to optimize customer facing websites. Many companies employ experimentation specialists to facilitate and improve the process of A/B testing. Here, we present the application of A/B testing to…
Motor challenges are prevalent among autistic children, and games are able to simultaneously produce clinically meaningful results and provide a motivating context, but many current solutions are too rigid. We conducted a two-phase…
Autonomous swarms of robots can bring robustness, scalability and adaptability to safety-critical tasks such as search and rescue but their application is still very limited. Using semi-autonomous swarms with human control can bring robot…
The SmartAbility Android Application recommends Assistive Technology (AT) for people with reduced physical ability, by focusing on the actions (abilities) that can be performed independently. The Application utilises built-in sensor…
High levels of robot autonomy are a common goal, but there is a significant risk that the greater the autonomy of the robot the lesser the autonomy of the human working with the robot. For vulnerable populations like older adults who…
Mental disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are heterogeneous disorders that are notoriously difficult to diagnose, especially in children. The current psychiatric diagnostic process is based purely on the behavioural…
The integration of large language models (LLMs) with social robots has emerged as a promising avenue for enhancing human-robot interactions at a time when news reports generated by artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining in credibility.…
Recently, it has been considering robotics to face world population aging. According to the WHO, in 2050 there will be about 2.1 billion people over 60 years old worldwide causing a persistent growing need of assistance and a shortage of…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) represents a multifaceted neurodevelopmental condition marked by difficulties in social interaction, communication impediments, and repetitive behaviors. Despite progress in understanding ASD, its diagnosis…
Introduction: Socially assistive robots hold promise for enhancing therapeutic engagement in paediatric clinical settings. However, their successful implementation requires not only technical robustness but also context-sensitive,…