Research Papers - Dept of Information Technology

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Author: search.filters.author.Jayawardena, CSubject: search.filters.subject.Robot sensing systems

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Improved robot attitudes and emotions at a retirement home after meeting a robot
    (IEEE, 2010-09-13) Stafford, R. Q; Broadbent, E; Jayawardena, C; Unger, U; Kuo, I. H; Igic, A; Wong, R; Kerse, N; Watson, C; MacDonald, B. A
    This study investigated whether attitudes and emotions towards robots predicted acceptance of a healthcare robot in a retirement village population. Residents (n = 32) and staff (n = 21) at a retirement village interacted with a robot for approximately 30 minutes. Prior to meeting the robot, participants had their heart rate and blood pressure measured. The robot greeted the participants, assisted them in taking their vital signs, performed a hydration reminder, told a joke, played a music video, and asked some questions about falls and medication management. Participants were given two questionnaires; one before and one after interacting with the robot. Measures included in both questionnaires were the Robot Attitude Scale (RAS) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). After using the robot, participants rated the overall quality of the robot interaction. Both residents and staff reported more favourable attitudes (p <; .05) and decreases in negative affect (p <; .05) towards the robot after meeting it, compared with before meeting it. Pre-interaction emotions and robot attitudes, combined with post-interaction changes in emotions and robot attitudes, were highly predictive of participants' robot evaluations (R = .88, p <; .05). The results suggest both pre-interaction emotions and attitudes towards robots, as well as experience with the robot, are important areas to monitor and address in influencing acceptance of healthcare robots in retirement village residents and staff. The results support an active cognition model that incorporates a feedback loop based on re-evaluation after experience.
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    An efficient programming framework for socially assistive robots based on separation of robot behavior description from execution
    (IEEE, 2013-11-12) Kuo, I. H; Jayawardena, C; MacDonald, B. A
    One of the main challenges in socially assistive robotics is providing flexible and easy-to-use programming tools for users. Unlike other robots, designing socially assistive robots includes the subject-matter-experts (SMEs) from non-engineering disciplines. Therefore, the provided tools should be suitable for users with less programming experience. On the other hand, socially assistive robotic research involves field trials and user-centric studies, in which user and subject matter expert comments are used to improve the robot applications. Therefore, field programmability and customizability are key requirements. This paper presents a programming framework for socially assistive robots, which satisfies the above requirements; programmability by non-experts, field programmability and customizability. The proposed framework has been successfully implemented, deployed, and tested. Some robots with the framework presented in this paper are already in the commercialization pathway.
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    Designing a socially assistive companion robotic wheel chair: RoboChair
    (IEEE, 2013-11-12) Jayawardena, C; Baghaei, N; Ganeshan, K; Sarrafzadeh, A
    Developing socially assistive robots is an emerging interdisciplinary research area, which requires collaboration between a wide range of disciplines. Among recent research projects, there have been attempts to develop assistive robotic solutions to solve various health and social issues. In most current research attempts to design socially assistive robots, the focus is on designing new robotic agents that can interact with people by various means. Since people do not have much experience with robots, usually extensive field trials are conducted in order to assess the usability of these robots. However, determining the usability of these robotic agents is a difficult task, since the results of field trials are not always conclusive. In this paper, an attempt to overcome the difficulty of evaluating usability of assistive robots is presented. This paper presents the design of the first version of a companion robot called RoboChair. RoboChair is in the form of a wheel chair. But, functionally it is a socially assistive companion robot. The proposed robotic chair is a mobile robot that can carry a person. It is equipped with several measuring devices for taking clinical measurements mentioned above. In addition to that, it is equipped with several sensors for obstacle avoidance, map building, localization, detecting humans etc. It is also equipped with motor controllers and other actuators for motion control. The robot chair is capable of engaging users with interactive dialogs through a touch screen and by using human-robot interaction techniques. It has a scalable modular architecture so that adding new hardware and software modules is straightforward. The software framework is based on Robot Operating System (ROS) open source robotic middleware. RoboChair is controlled by a distributed controller that spans multiple hardware devices and multiple operating systems.
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    Socially Assistive Robot HealthBot: Design, Implementation, and Field Trials
    (IEEE, 2016-09-01) Jayawardena, C; Kuo, I. H; Broadbent, E; MacDonald, B. A
    Socially assistive robotics is an important emerging research area. Socially assistive robotics is challenging as it is required to move robots out of laboratories and industrial settings to interact with ordinary human beings as peers, which requires social skills. The design process usually requires multidisciplinary research teams, which may comprise subject matter experts from various domains such as robotics, systems integration, medicine, psychology, gerontology, social and cognitive sciences, and neuroscience, among many others. Unlike most other robotic applications, socially assistive robotics faces some unique software and systems integration challenges. In this paper, the HealthBot robot architecture, which was designed to overcome these challenges, is presented. The presented architecture was implemented and used in several field trials. The details of the field trials are presented, and lessons learned are discussed with field trial results.
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    Design, implementation and field tests of a socially assistive robot for the elderly: Healthbot version 2
    (IEEE, 2012-06-24) Jayawardena, C; Kuo, I; Datta, C; Stafford, R.Q; Broadbent, E; MacDonald, B. A
    This paper presents the second version of a mobile service robot (HealthBot) designed for older people. The lessons learned from studies of the first version of the robot at a retirement village, and design decisions for the second version, are discussed. Technical requirements of field trials, a focus on cognitive human-robot interactions, the importance of working together in a multidisciplinary team, and the necessity for rapid iterative development suggested a new software framework. The features of new framework are discussed and implementation details are presented. Details of field trials and user acceptance results are presented. Results are promising for older-user acceptance of the robot.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationEmbargo
    Improved robot attitudes and emotions at a retirement home after meeting a robot
    (IEEE, 2010-09-13) Stafford, R. Q; Broadbent, E; Jayawardena, C; Unger, U; Kuo, I. H; Igic, A; Wong, R; Kerse, N; Watson, C; MacDonald, B. A
    This study investigated whether attitudes and emotions towards robots predicted acceptance of a healthcare robot in a retirement village population. Residents (n = 32) and staff (n = 21) at a retirement village interacted with a robot for approximately 30 minutes. Prior to meeting the robot, participants had their heart rate and blood pressure measured. The robot greeted the participants, assisted them in taking their vital signs, performed a hydration reminder, told a joke, played a music video, and asked some questions about falls and medication management. Participants were given two questionnaires; one before and one after interacting with the robot. Measures included in both questionnaires were the Robot Attitude Scale (RAS) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). After using the robot, participants rated the overall quality of the robot interaction. Both residents and staff reported more favourable attitudes (p <; .05) and decreases in negative affect (p <; .05) towards the robot after meeting it, compared with before meeting it. Pre-interaction emotions and robot attitudes, combined with post-interaction changes in emotions and robot attitudes, were highly predictive of participants' robot evaluations (R = .88, p <; .05). The results suggest both pre-interaction emotions and attitudes towards robots, as well as experience with the robot, are important areas to monitor and address in influencing acceptance of healthcare robots in retirement village residents and staff. The results support an active cognition model that incorporates a feedback loop based on re-evaluation after experience.