Rhythmic attention in child-robot dance play

Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces

Nalin²,

Wood

et al. 2011

We present insights gleaned from a series of child-robot interaction experiments carried out in a hospital paediatric department. Our aim here is to share good practice in experimental design and lessons learned about the implementation of systems for social HRI with child users towards application in "the wild", rather than in tightly controlled and constrained laboratory environments: a trade-off between the structures imposed by experimental design and the desire for removal of such constraints that inhibit interaction depth, and hence engagement, requires a careful balance. Categories and Subject Descriptors General TermsDesign, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory. KeywordsChild-robot interaction, experimental practice, human-robot interaction, interaction design, social robotics. THE CHALLENGES OF LONG-TERM HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTIONOver the last few decades electromechanical progress in robotics has outpaced developments in artificial cognition. This has been noticeable across the various sub-fields of . robotics, but never more so than in social robotics. Robots embedded in a social environment not only need to deal with the challenges encountered by field robots, but in addition need capabilities for coping with highly dynamic and stochastic elements inherent in the social milieu. As such, social robots have to face a number of challenges which are to a large extent still beyond the current state of the art in science and technology. The three main challenges yet to be surmounted by social robotics are:1. Contingent responding in dynamic social environments:In field robotics, an action by the robot does not necessarily induce a significant reaction from the environment: an unmanned vehicle driving around a rock, does not precipitate a response from the rock. In a social environment however, an action by a robot will almost always prompts some reaction from the user or users. Endowing robots with capabilities for contingent and appropriate handling of user responses, plus some capacity for the prediction of responses to their subsequent actions, is one of the main challenges in HRI.2. Interpretation of social sensory information: in contrast to robots which do not engage in interaction over natural communication channels, social robots are required to make sense of social signals. For interactions that go beyond proto-social responses, this has proven to be a tremendous challenge. The multi-modal aspect of social interaction thus continues to elude us, but even the interpretation of single modalities, such as gesture or language, has proven to be extremely challenging. The early promise of multi-modal communication channels constraining the interpretation of social information has delivered limited progress.3. Designing sociable robots: while progress in the electromechanical design of robots has been impressive and we seem to have a fairly clear understanding of which elements of the physical embodiment of a robot engage the user, the biggest challenge remains the creation believable, contingent...

Section: Social Components Of the Dance Scenariomentioning

confidence: 99%

Child-robot interaction in the wild

Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces

Nalin²,

Wood

et al. 2011

“…Dance is considered a fun activity that allows children to easily engage [35], probably due to the involvement of body movement during the activity which in turn increases enjoyment [4]. But more importantly it i ) stimulates physical movement, which is essential for the development of fundamental motor skills; ii ) enhances the development of social skills, such as cooperation, coordination, sharing ideas, sharing physical space, accepting individual differences; iii ) increases communication skills; and iv ) promotes the development of creativity and spontaneity [28,22]. Considered an important educational source, dance is also promoted at schools as part of their curricula (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive human–robot interaction in sensorimotor task instruction: From human to robot dance tutors

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

Baroni²,

Demiris

2014

We explore the potential for humanoid robots to interact with children in a dance activity. In this context, the robot plays the role of an instructor to guide the child through several dance moves to learn a dance phrase. We participated in 30 dance sessions in schools to study human-human interaction between children and a human dance teacher, and to identify the applied methodologies. Based on the strategies observed, both social and task-dependent, we implemented a robotic system capable of autonomously instructing dance sequences to children while displaying basic social cues to engage the child in the task. Experiments were performed in a hospital with the Nao robot interacting with 12 children through multiple encounters, when possible (18 sessions, 236 minutes). Observational analysis through video recordings and survey evaluations were used to assess the quality of interaction. Moreover, we introduce an involvement measure based on the aggregation of observed behavioral cues to to assess the level of interest in the interaction through time. The analysis revealed high levels of involvement, while highlighting the need for further research into social engagement and adaptation with robots over repeated sessions.

“…But more importantly it i ) stimulates physical movement, which is essential for the development of fundamental motor skills; ii ) enhances the development of social skills, such as cooperation, coordination, sharing ideas, sharing physical space, accepting individual differences; iii ) increases communication skills; and iv ) promotes the development of creativity and spontaneity [13] [10]. Considered an important educational source, dance is also promoted at schools as part of their curricula (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creative Dance: An Approach for Social Interaction between Robots and Children

Human Behavior Understanding

Demiris

2013

Abstract. In this paper we discuss the potential of using a dance robot tutor with children in the context of creative dance to study child-robot interaction through several encounters. We have taken part of dance sessions in order to extract strategies and models to inspire and justify the design of a robot dance tutor. Moreover, we present implementation details and preliminary results on a pilot study to extract initial feedback to further improve and test our system with a broader children population.