The aim of this study was to explore the potential of using a social robot in speech therapy interventions in children. A descriptive and explorative case study design was implemented involving the intervention for language disorder in five children with different needs with an age ranging from 9 to 12 years. Children participated in sessions with a NAO-type robot in individual sessions. Qualitative methods were used to collect data on aspects of viability, usefulness, barriers and facilitators for the child as well as for the therapist in order to obtain an indication of the effects on learning and the achievement of goals. The main results pointed out the affordances and possibilities of the use of a NAO robot in achieving speech therapy and educational goals. A NAO can contribute towards eliciting motivation, readiness towards learning and improving attention span of the children. The results of the study showed the potential that NAO has in therapy and education for children with different disabilities. More research is needed to gain insight into how a NAO can be applied best in speech therapy to make a more inclusive education conclusions.
There are many phase measuring experimental setups in which the rate of temporal phase variation cannot be easily determined. In the case of phase stepping techniques, asynchronous phase measuring techniques were developed to solve this problem. However, there are situations for which the standard asynchronous techniques are not appropriated, like experiments with a sensitivity variation in the phase. In this work, we present an asynchronous demodulation technique for which the only requirement is the monotonicity of the phase in time. The proposed method is based in the computation of the quadrature sign (QS) of the fringe pattern and afterwards the demodulation is performed by a simple arccos calculation, that thanks to the QS extends its range from half fringe to a modulo 2p calculation. The presented demodulation method is asynchronous, direct, fast and can be applied to a general n-dimensional case. We have applied the proposed method to a load stepping experimental fringe pattern obtaining good results.
The effectiveness of social robots such as NAO in pedagogical therapies presents a challenge. There is abundant literature focused on therapies using robots with children with autism, but there is a gap to be filled in other educational different needs. This paper describes an experience of using a NAO as an assistant in a logopedic and pedagogical therapy with children with different needs. Even if the initial robot architecture is based on genericbehaviors, the loading and execution time for each specific requirement and the needs of each child in therapy, made it necessary to develop “Adaptive Behaviors”. These evolve into an adaptive architecture, appliedto the engineer–therapist–child interaction, requiring the engineer-programmer to be always present during the sessions. Benefits from the point of view of the therapist and the children and the acceptance of NAO in therapy are shown. A robot in speech-therapy sessions can play a positive role in several logopedic aspectsserving as a motivating factor for the children.Future works should be oriented in developing intelligent algorithms so as to eliminate the presence of the engineer-programmer in the sessions. Additional work proposals should consider deepening the psychological aspects of using humanoid robots in educational therapy.
In this paper we present the application of a direct demodulation method for the measurement of surface topography by means of Shadow-Moire´. In our set-up, we use three LEDs (with green, red and blue peak wavelengths) to illuminate the grating. Due to the different position of these light sources, a polychromatic Shadow-Moire´fringe pattern is produced, which can be described as the superposition of three monochromatic (red, green and blue) fringe patterns. Taking the image of this polychromatic fringe pattern with a RGB CCD camera, we get a monochromatic fringe pattern stored at each RGB channel of the CCD. The direct demodulation algorithm employed uses these fringe patterns to calculate the wrapped phase map. After unwrapping the phase map using a standard multi-grid technique, we implemented an automatic procedure to detect the area of interest of the phase map by removing low modulation zones and to calculate the absolute value of the phase. In this way it is possible to determine the topography of a surface with a single RGB snapshot maintaining a simple experimental set-up, which is an important feature, especially for the study of dynamic
A novel calibration method for whole field three-dimensional shape measurement by means of fringe projection is presented. Standard calibration techniques, polynomial-and model-based, have practical limitations such as the difficulty of measuring large fields of view, the need to use precise z stages, and bad calibration results due to inaccurate calibration points. The proposed calibration procedure is a mixture of the two main standard techniques, sharing their benefits and avoiding their main problems. In the proposed method, an absolute phase is projected over marked planes placed at unknown positions. The corresponding absolute phase and marks positions are recovered for each plane location. Using Zhang's calibration method, internal camera parameters ͑also called intrinsic parameters͒ and the spatial position for each plane are computed. Later on, a polynomial fit of depth with respect to the phase is performed. To obtain the absolute position of an object point, the depth coordinate is obtained by means of the polynomial calibration and its absolute phase. Then the lateral coordinates are computed from the depth, the internal parameters, and the pixel coordinates of the imaged point. Experimental results comparing the proposed method with the standard polynomial-based calibration are shown, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed technique.
This article describes an intrinsic case study of project-based learning (PBL) experience involving an NGO as an external client to promote sustainability competencies. Two research questions are posed: (1) How did this experiential PBL approach impact students learning to develop sustainability competencies by incorporating a responsible engineering perspective? (2) How did college students become engaged with social and sustainable PBL projects when external clients of developing economies were involved? The project-based design involved two subjects in the second year of an Industrial engineering degree. The client was an NGO with an existing project to improve the supply chain logistics of three refugee camps managed by women. Students had to cooperatively develop a sustainable proposal for the NGO with a global mindset. Findings obtained from the analysis of the reflections of students and teachers indicate that this methodology helps students to acquire comprehensively learning outcomes and to develop sustainability competencies. Sustainable and socially responsible engineering were achieved through a methodology that considers the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and engages students in real projects. This approach promotes student awareness on the importance of their actions and their personal behavior as engineers, including a gender perspective, while training them to move towards SDG4 and 5.
Abstract-The School of Engineering at the Universidad Europea de Madrid (UEM) implemented a change in the pedagogical model applied in its degrees at the 2012/2013 period: the "Project Based Engineering School" (PBES). It consists on the application of the Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology in at least several subjects each course in all its degrees. Each academic year, the students develop a capstone project covering partially the content of several subjects; faculty board and teachers were involved in the designing of a global framework and implementation adapted to each degree. How this process was made is explained in this paper. Positive results were obtained at the end of the first year that include further development of key skills, a deeper understanding of the specific skills and an increase on the motivation of students and teachers. There were also identified some areas for improvement for the coming years. This article will also show some of those results (both qualitative and quantitative) obtained after a year of experience from the students' point of view.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.