Humanoid Humanoid robots help robots help

autistic autistic childrenchildren

OutlineOutline

Motivation of the creatorsAutistic disordersA survey of the research

– Why robots might help

The field of researchConclusions

MotivationMotivation

Research in Human-Robot Interaction

Looking for a killer application– advertisement, receptionists, multi-media kiosks,– theatre and installations,– help elderly and disabled adults, – normal child supervision– toys

Better – How can we use robots to help people?

Autistic DisordersAutistic Disorders

1 of 300 children diagnosed with autism with rates rising To compare with other ilnesses:

– 1 of 800 children diagnosed with Down syndrome– 1 of 450 children diagnosed with juvenile diabetes– 1 of 333 children will develop cancer by age 20

Diagnosis currently made through behavioral observation– no blood test or genetic screening is available– there is evidence of a genetic link, so may be tests will arrive

Autistic Disorders: What are their Autistic Disorders: What are their Characteristics ?Characteristics ?

Inability to relate to other people

Little use of eye contact with other people

Difficulty understanding gestures and facial expressions

Difficulties with verbal & non-verbal communication

Difficulty understanding other’s intentions, feelings, and mental states

Why Use Robots for children with Why Use Robots for children with autism?autism?

Most children, including children with autism, are attracted to robots.

This natural affinity is exploited, and the robot is used as an interactive toy.

Robots may provide a less threatening environment than interacting with people.– Robots can provide a repetitive and more predictable

environment.– This “safe” environment can gently push a child with autism

towards human interaction.

Here tell about my personal experiences with autistic kids in our lab and the “president of Intel story”

There is a connection of autism to There is a connection of autism to imitationimitation

One theory: Autism may be caused by early impairments in imitation and shared attention (Rogers & Pennington, 1991) (Baron-Cohen, 1995)

Imitation is a format of communication, a means to express interest and engage others in interaction (Nadel, 1999)

Idea:Idea: Use a doll-like robot to engage children with autism and teach basic imitative interaction skills – From: K. Dautenhahn, and A. Billard, Games Children with Autism Can

Play With Robota, a Humanoid Robotic Doll, Proc. 1st Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology, 2002

Development of “Robota” robots for autistic childrenDevelopment of “Robota” robots for autistic children

A six-year old autistic boy playing with Robota.

He seemed curious about Robota's head movements and so he touches the doll.

From: K. Dautenhahn, and A. Billard, Games Children with Autism Can Play With Robota, a Humanoid Robotic Doll, Proc. 1st Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology, 2002

1. Research from Switzerland, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

• “Robota … allows the child to understand that the doll’s movement originates from his own movement (sense of agency)• It helps to understand that the doll’s movement is limited to a restricted category of movement (enhances intentional action)”

•From: J. Nadel, “Early Imitation and a Sense of Agency,” Proc. 4th Intl. Workshop on Epigenetic Robots, 2004

Imitation Using RobotaImitation Using Robota

An autistic child playing “chasing” games with the mobile robot

From: K. Dautenhahn, and A. Billard, Games Children with Autism Can Play With Robota, a Humanoid Robotic Doll, Proc. 1st Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology, 2002

Joint AttentionJoint Attention Using Robota Using Robota

From: B. Robins, P. Dickerson, and K. Dautenhahn, “Robots as Embodied Beings – Interactionally Sensitive Body MovementsIn Interactions Among Autistic Children and a Robot,” Proc. RO-MAN 2005

Robota is controlled via teleoperation by the investigator.

The investigator encourages the children to show each other howthey can interact with the robot.

The robot will not move unless the children show the same movement,i.e., they must work together.

Two autistic children:Note Andy’s gaze atJack.

Investigator remotely encourages interaction and immitation by children

Andy and Jack touch each other to balance themselves while each raising a leg.

Adam shows no interest in his classmatesand usually tries to avoid the rest of thechildren. But Adam is interested in Robota.

Adam takes Rob’s hand to show him how to interact with Robota.

The new prototype of RobotaThe new prototype of Robota

The current prototype of the doll-shaped humanoid robot Robota is presented here.

The use of the robot Robota as part of studies with disabled children sets a number of constraints on its design.

In particular, it requires that the robot bears a human likeness both in its body features and in the kinematics of its motions.

The current design consists in a 23 degrees of freedom upper body, including a 3 DOFs spine, two 7 DOFs arm, a 3 DOFs pair of eyes and a 3 DOFs neck.

The prototype of armThe prototype of arm The current prototype of arm is a 6 DOFs arm with a 1 DOF gripper. It is 26 centimeter long for

700gr.

The motors were dimensioned so as to carry an external load of up to 200 gr.

The different DOFs were designed to be reversible, in order to provide an interface for teaching the robot by demonstration.

The first three degrees of freedom are placed in the shoulder. The three rotation axes cross at the same point.

This implies that the elbow moves on a sphere. We have one DOF in the elbow and two DOFs in the wrist.

The gripper is composed of 3 fingers actuated by one single DOF.

To have an absolute measure of the position of each joint, we have placed potentiometers on each axis.

We can, thus, measure the absolute position of the arm when the arm is switched on, and, hence, initialize the motor encoders without having to send the motors to the reset position.

This ensures minimal risks when the robot interacts with children, by preventing any involuntary motion if the robot should reset itself.

The prototype of eyesThe prototype of eyes

A prototype of a 3 DOFs pair of eyes has been developped.

One DOF drives the horizontal rotation of the two eyes and the two other DOFs drive the vertical rotation of each eye.

Thus, the robot can wink but not squint!

In each eye, we have placed one ''mobile phone'' CMOS camera.

The principal constraint in this project is the aesthetic of the robot.

We use then real doll eyes that we modify to insert the cameras, by drilling a tiny hole through the pupil, making sure that the iris remains intact.

The volume of the eyes is, however, too small to contain the electronic board (that proceeds to the digital conversion of the image).

Thus, the sensor must be connected to the board through a flex cable in such a way that the cable is not impeding the movement of the eyes.

The prototype of neckThe prototype of neck

For the prototype of Robota's neck, we have 3 DOFs (lace, pitch and roll).

These are placed in series, starting with lace, and, then pitch and roll.

The system has been designed to support a load of 400gr, so that it could still drive the head of the robot in any position.

Pitch and Roll are controlled by transmission through a set of cables and pulleys, while Lace is controlled by a direct drive from the motor.

Using direct drive and cable transmission minimizes the chance of encountering backlash problems.

The prototype of spineThe prototype of spine The current prototype of spine drives two DOFs for front-back and left-right bending

respectively.

The third DOF of the torso, supported by the spine, drives the horizontal rotation of the shoulders.

The spine is about 200mm high for a diameter of 90mm.

It weights about 1Kg and supports a load of 2Kg located at 80mm on the spine.

This corresponds to the estimated mass of the current prototypes and position of the mass center of the two arms and the head.

To obtain a smooth curvature along the spine, we have used a low pressure hydraulic system.

Four pistons are placed at each level of the spine (there are four levels), two for each DOF.

To move the spine, we have two motors placed in its base.

Using a reduction gear, each motor transmits the movement to an endless screw that moves two pistons working as a pump.

         

           

         

           

         

           

         

           

         

           

         

           

         

           

         

           

         

           

            

                  

            

                  

            

                  

            

                  

         

           

         

           

            

                  

            

                  

           

                   

           

                   

           

                   

           

                   

         

           

           

                   

         

               

           

                   

         

              

           

                   

         

            

         

               

         

              

         

               

            

                  

          

                    

           

                   

Interacting with KeeponInteracting with Keepon

From: H. Kozima, C. Nakagawa, and Y. Yasuda, “Interactive Robots for Communication-Care: A Case Study in AutismTherapy,” Proc. RO-MAN 2005

Keepon is controlled via teleoperation.

2. Research from Japan

Views from Keepon’s camera eyes

Keepon is a robot that sees you and tracks you

Attentive action

Emotive action

• Keepon's kinematic mechanism.

• Two gimbals are connected by four wires; the lower gimbal is driven by two motors.

• Another motor rotates the whole inner-structure;

• Yet another drives the skull downward for bobbing.

Enabling InteractionEnabling Interaction

Joint attention: Sharing the perceptual information

Eye-contact: Referring to each other's mental states

Enables people to exchange intention and emotion toward a target.

Emergence of dyadic interaction. Spontaneous actions to Keepon (left) and actions copied from others (right).

Emergence of triadic interaction. The child discovers excitement in Keepon (left) and then looks at the adult to share the excitement (right).

Dyadic and triadic interactions

child

Scassellati : Using Robots for Autism : Using Robots for Autism DiagnosisDiagnosis

From: B. Scassellati, “Quantitative Metrics of Social Responsefor Autism Diagnosis,” Proc. RO-MAN 2005

ESRA Playtest

3. Yale University

Autism Diagnosis MethodsAutism Diagnosis Methods

1. Reaction to the ESRA robot with and with and withoutwithout the face configuration

Can generate facial expressionsusing 5 servo motors

Two motors added for horizontal eye movement

Autism Diagnosis MethodsAutism Diagnosis Methods

2. Measure listening preferences to speech sounds

At the press of a button,an audio clip is played.

The interaction of a child withthe robot is loggedin non-volatile memory.

Autism Diagnosis MethodsAutism Diagnosis Methods Vocal prosody, i.e., how something is said

Separation of two features used in a Bayesian classifier distinguishes low energy categories (neutral and soothing) from high energy categories (approval, attention, and prohibition).

Features F24 vs. F1Mean pitch * energy vs. mean pitch

Autism Diagnosis MethodsAutism Diagnosis Methods

3. Position tracking relative to another person

Autism Diagnosis MethodsAutism Diagnosis Methods4. Gaze direction and focus of attention

Red – adolescents with autismBlue – typical adolescents

•For example, F(au)*G(self) indicates a filter trained on an individual with autism and tested on that same individual while F(nc)*G(au) indicates a filter trained on a control individual and tested on an individual with autism.

• The mean performance of this data (y-axis) is a function of the response percentile of individual pairings.

• Significant differences (all p<0.01 for a two-tailed t-test) are seen between the following classes: (1) F(nc)*G(self), (2) F(au)*G(self), (3) F(nc)* G(other nc), and (4) the three other conditions.

• Linear discriminant analysis of autistic (au) and typical (nc) gaze patterns.

•Linear filters F(x) are trained to reproduce the gaze pattern G(x) of each individual x

• and then applied to predict the gaze patterns of any other individual.

University of Sherbrooke Project University of Sherbrooke Project for students for students with double meaningwith double meaning

Project for engineering students:– Design a robotic toy for an autistic child

Educational value– Real world problem– Students work together in a team– Students must first investigate autistic disorders

4. University of Sherbrooke4. University of Sherbrooke

University of Sherbrooke student projects University of Sherbrooke student projects for autistic childrenfor autistic children

Pushing Jumbo around the play area.

Rolling game with Roball.

From: Michaud, F., Théberge-Turmel, C. (2002), "Mobile robotic toys and autism", Socially Intelligent Agents - Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots, Kluwer, pp. 125-132.

University of SherbrookeUniversity of Sherbrooke

Assembling the arms and tail of C-Pac.

Girl showing signs of interest toward Bobus.

From: Michaud, F., Théberge-Turmel, C. (2002), "Mobile robotic toys and autism", Socially Intelligent Agents - Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots, Kluwer, pp. 125-132.

Autistic kids do some actual robot assembly

Kids design big stuffed robots

Other robots of this kind - the Tiger KittyOther robots of this kind - the Tiger Kitty

5. The iCat by Philips Research

The Field of ResearchersThe Field of Researchers

Francois Michaud– University of Sherbrooke, Canada

Kerstin Dautenhahn & Ben Robbins– University of Hertfordshire, UK

Aude Billard– Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)

Jacqueline Nadel– French National Centre of Scientific Research

The Field of ResearchersThe Field of Researchers

Brian Scassellati and Bob Schultz– Yale University

Javier Movellan– University of California – San Diego

Hideki Kozima– National Institute of ICT, Japan

Michio Okada– ATR, Kyoto, Japan

ConclusionsConclusions

The use of robots for autism therapy and diagnosis is just beginning.

There is anecdotal evidence that robot therapy can help children with autism

Can we do something with Robot Theatre?

Dolls, monsters, or may be something new?Dolls, monsters, or may be something new?

I believe that Halloween robot technology can be reused to build robot theatre with robots of natural size.

Inexpensive, after Halloween.

More More examples of examples of Halloween Halloween

robotsrobots

We changed We changed Crazy Scientist to Crazy Scientist to Professor Niels Professor Niels

Bohr for Teenage Bohr for Teenage Robot TheatreRobot Theatre

We converted We converted Santa to Santa to

Paekchong robot Paekchong robot for Hahoe for Hahoe TheatreTheatre

Sources of slides and ideasSources of slides and ideas

Brian Scassellati, Francois Michaud, Ben Robins, and Hideki

Kozima Marjorie Skubic