Related papers: SPARCS: Structuring Physically Assistive Robotics …
To facilitate the advancement of research in healthcare robots without human intervention or commands, we introduce the Autonomous Helping Challenge, along with a crowd-sourcing large-scale dataset. The goal is to create healthcare robots…
Robots' visual qualities (VQs) impact people's perception of their characteristics and affect users' behaviors and attitudes toward the robot. Recent years point toward a growing need for Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) in various contexts…
We present Speaking Memories, a distributed, stakeholder-in-the-loop robotic interaction platform for personalized cognitive exercise support. Rather than a single robot-centric system, Speaking Memories is designed as a generalizable…
High-performance computing (HPC) systems consume enormous amounts of energy, with idle nodes as a major source of energy waste. Powering down idle nodes can mitigate this problem, but long boot/shutdown delays can introduce significant…
Robotic devices hold great potential for efficient and reliable assessment of neuromotor abnormalities in post-stroke patients. However, spasticity caused by stroke is still assessed manually in clinical settings. The limited and variable…
Family-school partnerships (FSP) are critical to children's development, yet families often face barriers such as time constraints, fragmented communication, and limited opportunities for meaningful engagement. As a step toward facilitating…
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…
Robotics and automation have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for people with assistive needs and their carers. Adoption of such technologies at this point in time is far from widespread. This paper presents a novel…
Foundation models hold significant potential for enabling robots to perform long-horizon general manipulation tasks. However, the simplicity of tasks and the uniformity of environments in existing benchmarks restrict their effective…
Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have largely been propelled by scaling. In Robotics, scaling is hindered by the lack of access to massive robot datasets. We advocate using realistic physical simulation as a means to…
Simulation studies play a key role in the validation of causal inference methods. The simulation results are reliable only if the study is designed according to the promised operational conditions of the method-in-test. Still, many causal…
Telepresence VR systems allow for face-to-face communication, promoting the feeling of presence and understanding of nonverbal cues. However, when discussing virtual 3D objects, limitations to presence and communication cause deictic…
Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic coaches promise the improved engagement of patients on rehabilitation exercises through social interaction. While previous work explored the potential of automatically monitoring exercises for AI and…
The popularity of 3D printed assistive technology has led to the emergence of new ecosystems of care, where multiple stakeholders (makers, clinicians, and recipients with disabilities) work toward creating new upper limb prosthetic devices.…
Vision-Language-Action models (VLAs) mark a major shift in robot learning. They replace specialized architectures and task-tailored components of expert policies with large-scale data collection and setup-specific fine-tuning. In this…
As the number of Persons with Disabilities (PWD), particularly those with one or more physical impairments, increases, there is an increasing demand for assistive robotic technologies that can support independent mobility in the built…
Autonomous mobile service robots, like lawnmowers or cleaning robots, operating in human-populated environments need to reason about local human-human interactions to support safe and socially aware navigation while fulfilling their tasks.…
A Cyber-Physical-Social System (CPSS) is an emerging paradigm often understood as a physical and virtual space of interaction which is cohabited by humans and sensor-enabled smart devices. In such settings, human interaction behaviour is…
Humans excel in navigating diverse, complex environments with agile motor skills, exemplified by parkour practitioners performing dynamic maneuvers, such as climbing up walls and jumping across gaps. Reproducing these agile movements with…
Service robots should be able to operate autonomously in dynamic and daily changing environments over an extended period of time. While Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) is one of the most fundamental problems for robotic…