This paper describes the work that is done by a group of I3 students at Philips CFT in Eindhoven, Netherlands. I3 is an initiative of Fontys University of Professional Education also located in Eindhoven. The work focuses on the use of computer vision in motion control. Experiments are done with several techniques for object recognition and tracking, and with the guidance of a robot movement by means of computer vision. These experiments involve detection of coloured objects, object detection based on specific features, template matching with automatically generated templates, and interaction of a robot with a physical object that is viewed by a camera mounted on the robot.
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To benefit from the social capabilities of a robot math tutor, instead of being distracted by them, a novel approach is needed where the math task and the robot's social behaviors are better intertwined. We present concrete design specifications of how children can practice math via a personal conversation with a social robot and how the robot can scaffold instructions. We evaluated the designs with a three-session experimental user study (n = 130, 8-11 y.o.). Participants got better at math over time when the robot scaffolded instructions. Furthermore, the robot felt more as a friend when it personalized the conversation.
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Hospitalisation is stressful for children. Play material is often offered for distraction and comfort. Weexplored how contact with social robot PLEO could positively affect a child’s well-being. To this end, we performed a multiple case study on the paediatric ward of two hospitals. Child life specialists offered PLEO as a therapeutic activity to children in a personalised way for a well-being related purpose in three to five play like activity sessions during hospital visits/stay. Robot–child interaction was observed; care professionals, children and parents were interviewed. Applying direct content analysis revealed six categories of interest: interaction with PLEO, role of the adults, preferences for PLEO, PLEO as buddy, attainment of predetermined goal(s) and deployment of PLEO. Four girls and five boys, aged 4–13, had PLEO offered as a relief from stress or boredom or for physical stimulation. All but one started interacting with PLEO and showed behaviours like hugging, caring or technical exploration, promoting relaxation, activation and/or making contact. Interaction with PLEO contributed to achieving the well-being related purpose for six of them. PLEO was perceived as attractive to elicit play. Although data are limited, promising results emerge that the well-being of hospitalised children might be fostered by a personalised PLEO offer.
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This paper presents a multi-layer scheme to control a formation of three mobile robots. Each layer works as an independent module, dealing with a specific part of the problem of formation control, thus giving to the system more flexibility. In order to reduce formation errors, the proposed architecture includes a layer which performs an adaptive dynamic compensation, using a robust updating law, which compensates for each robot dynamics. The controller is able to guide the robots to the desired formation, including the possibility of time-varying position and/or shape. Stability analysis is performed for the closed-loop system, and the result is that the formation errors are ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results for a group of three unicycle-like mobile robots are presented, which show that system performance is improved when the adaptive dynamic compensation layer is included in the formation control scheme. © 2009 IEEE.
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Programmed control systems are ubiquitous in the present-day world. In current educational practice, however, these systems are hardly being addressed, and little is known about children’s spontaneous understandings about such systems. Therefore, we explored pupils’ understandings prior to instruction in three concrete settings: a car park, an elevator, and an autonomous robot. We analysed written responses from 49 Grade 3 (aged 7 to 10) and Grade 6 pupils (aged 10 to 13) to assess their understandings from two perspectives: the user and the system programmer perspective. Results indicate that most pupils were capable describing programmed systems from a user perspective point of view but found it hard to describe the system programmer perspective. Substantial differences were found between the contexts. The car park context evoked richer descriptions for the user perspective and the system programmer perspective in comparison to the elevator and autonomous robot contexts.
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This study aimed (1) to examine the contribution of robot ZORA in achieving therapeutic and educational goals in rehabilitation and special education for children with severe physical disabilities, and (2) to discover the roles professionals attribute to robot ZORA when it is used in robot-based play interventions in rehabilitation and special education for children with severe physical disabilities. A multi-centre mixed methods study was conducted among children with severe physical disabilities in two centres for rehabilitation and one school for special education. The participating children played with robot ZORA six times during a period of 6 weeks, in individual or group sessions. Quantitative data were gathered about the contribution of ZORA in reaching individual goals for all of the participating children, using the Individually Prioritized Problem Assessment (IPPA). Playfulness was measured with a visual analogue scale (0–10) and children could indicate whether they liked the sessions using a scale consisting of smileys. Video-stimulated recall interviews were used to collect qualitative data about the different roles of ZORA. In total, 33 children and 12 professionals participated in the study. The results of the IPPA showed a significant contribution of ZORA to the achievement of (children’s) individual goals. The data gathered using the IPPA during the ZORA-based interventions showed that the largest contributions of robot ZORA lie in the domains of movement skills and communication skills. Playfulness of the sessions was 7.5 on average and 93% of the sessions were evaluated as ‘enjoyable’ by the children. Overall, ZORA could positively contribute to the achievement of individual goals for children with severe physical disabilities. According to the participating professionals the most promising roles in which robot ZORA can be used are motivator, rewarder or instructor.
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The current study investigated how individual differences among children affect the added value of social robots for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to young children. Specifically, we investigated the moderating role of three individual child characteristics deemed relevant for language learning: first language (L1) vocabulary knowledge, phonological memory, and selective attention. We expected children low in these abilities to particularly benefit from being assisted by a robot in a vocabulary training. An L2 English vocabulary training intervention consisting of seven sessions was administered to 193 monolingual Dutch five-year-old children over a three- to four-week period. Children were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: 1) a tablet only, 2) a tablet and a robot that used deictic (pointing) gestures (the no-iconic-gestures condition), or 3) a tablet and a robot that used both deictic and iconic gestures (i.e., gestures depicting the target word; the iconic-gestures condition). There also was a control condition in which children did not receive a vocabulary training, but played dancing games with the robot. L2 word knowledge was measured directly after the training and two to four weeks later. In these post-tests, children in the experimental conditions outperformed children in the control condition on word knowledge, but there were no differences between the three experimental conditions. Several moderation effects were found. The robot's presence particularly benefited children with larger L1 vocabularies or poorer phonological memory, while children with smaller L1 vocabularies or better phonological memory performed better in the tablet-only condition. Children with larger L1 vocabularies and better phonological memory performed better in the no-iconic-gestures condition than in the iconic-gestures condition, while children with better selective attention performed better in the iconic-gestures condition than the no-iconic-gestures condition. Together, the results showed that the effects of the robot and its gestures differ across children, which should be taken into account when designing and evaluating robot-assisted L2 teaching interventions.
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Robot tutors provide new opportunities for education. However, they also introduce moral challenges. This study reports a systematic literature re-view (N = 256) aimed at identifying the moral considerations related to ro-bots in education. While our findings suggest that robot tutors hold great potential for improving education, there are multiple values of both (special needs) children and teachers that are impacted (positively and negatively) by its introduction. Positive values related to robot tutors are: psychological welfare and happiness, efficiency, freedom from bias and usability. However, there are also concerns that robot tutors may negatively impact these same values. Other concerns relate to the values of friendship and attachment, human contact, deception and trust, privacy, security, safety and accountability. All these values relate to children and teachers. The moral values of other stakeholder groups, such as parents, are overlooked in the existing literature. The results suggest that, while there is a potential for ap-plying robot tutors in a morally justified way, there are imported stake-holder groups that need to be consulted to also take their moral values into consideration by implementing tutor robots in an educational setting. (from Narcis.nl)
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As part of an 8-week intervention study in Dutch nursing homes, we used video-analysis to observe the interaction of psychogeriatric participants with either the handler, the stimulus (dog or robot) or other clients during weekly dog, robot (RAI, robot assisted interventions) and control (human facilitator only) group sessions. Additionally, we measured the initiative of the handler to engage participants. Several baseline characteristics, including dementia severity, neuropsychiatric symptoms and medication usage, were recorded as possible confounders.Participant-handler interaction is increased in all three groups compared to a baseline of no interaction, while inter-client interaction is not. In the dog group participant-handler interaction scores are similar to participant-dog interaction scores, while in the robot group participant-handler interaction scores are significantly lower than participant-robot interaction scores. Handler initiative does not differ between the three groups.Our results suggest that a handler effect of AAI on social interaction in dementia care does exist and we hypothesize this effect is linked to the required fully embodied, mutual attunement between dog and handler and between dog-handler team and participants. This embodied interaction distinguishes AAI from RAI and when the required attunement is met, AAI can significantly increase the social interaction of people with dementia.
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An important issue in the field of motion control of wheeled mobile robots is that the design of most controllers is based only on the robot’s kinematics. However, when high-speed movements and/or heavy load transportation are required, it becomes essential to consider the robot dynamics as well. The control signals generated by most dynamic controllers reported in the literature are torques or voltages for the robot motors, while commercial robots usually accept velocity commands. In this context, we present a velocity-based dynamic model for differential drive mobile robots that also includes the dynamics of the robot actuators. Such model has linear and angular velocities as inputs and has been included in Peter Corke’s Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB, therefore it can be easily integrated into simulation systems that have been built for the unicycle kinematics. We demonstrate that the proposed dynamic model has useful mathematical properties. We also present an application of such model on the design of an adaptive dynamic controller and the stability analysis of the complete system, while applying the proposed model properties. Finally, we show some simulation and experimental results and discuss the advantages and limitations of the proposed model.
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