More Attention and Less Repetitive and Stereotyped Behaviors using a Robot with Children with Autism

in 27th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, RO-MAN 2018, Nanjing, China, August 27-31, 2018 (2018)

The aim of the present study was to assess the usefulness of QTrobot, a socially assistive robot, in interventions with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by assessing children's attention ... [more ▼]

The aim of the present study was to assess the usefulness of QTrobot, a socially assistive robot, in interventions with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by assessing children's attention, imitation, and presence of repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. Fifteen children diagnosed with ASD, aged from 4 to 14 years participated in two short interactions, one with a person and one with the robot. Statistical analyses revealed that children directed more attention towards the robot than towards the person, imitated the robot as much as the person, and engaged in fewer repetitive or stereotyped behaviors with the robot than with the person. These results support previous research demonstrating the usefulness of robots in short interactions with children with ASD and provide new evidence to the usefulness of robots in reducing repetitive and stereotyped behaviors in children with ASD, which can affect children's learning. [less ▲]

Message Encryption in Robot Operating System: Collateral Effects of Hardening Mobile Robots

in Frontiers in ICT (2018), 5

In human-robot interaction situations, robot sensors collect huge amounts of data from the environment in order to characterize the situation. Some of the gathered data ought to be treated as private ... [more ▼]

In human-robot interaction situations, robot sensors collect huge amounts of data from the environment in order to characterize the situation. Some of the gathered data ought to be treated as private, such as medical data (i.e., medication guidelines), personal and safety information (i.e., images of children, home habits, alarm codes, etc.). However, most robotic software development frameworks are not designed for securely managing this information. This paper analyzes the scenario of hardening one of the most widely used robotic middlewares, Robot Operating System (ROS). The study investigates a robot’s performance when ciphering the messages interchanged between ROS nodes under the publish/subscribe paradigm. In particular, this research focuses on the nodes which manage cameras and LIDAR sensors, which are two of the most extended sensing solutions in mobile robotics, and analyzes the collateral effects on the robot's achievement under different computing capabilities and encryption algorithms (3DES, AES and Blowfish) to robot performance. The findings present empirical evidence that simple encryption algorithms are lightweight enough to provide cyber-security even in low-powered robots when carefully designed and implemented. Nevertheless, these techniques come with a number of serious drawbacks regarding robot autonomy and performance if they are applied randomly. To avoid these issues, we define a taxonomy that links the type of ROS message, computational units, and the encryption methods. As a result, we present a model to select the optimal options for hardening a mobile robot using ROS. [less ▲]

Neural networks for recognizing human activities in home-like environments

in Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering (2018), (Preprint), 1--10

Application of Peer Review Techniques in Engineering Education

in International Journal of Engineering Education (2017)

Context Awareness in shared human-robot Environments: Benefits of Environment Acoustic Recognition for User Activity Classification

in 8th International Conference of Pattern Recognition Systems (ICPRS 2017), Madrid (Spain), 11-13 July 2017 (2017)

Context awareness is a key element in human-robot interaction. Being able to recognize user activity improves robot decision making when facing ordinary situations in home-like environments, as well as ... [more ▼]

Context awareness is a key element in human-robot interaction. Being able to recognize user activity improves robot decision making when facing ordinary situations in home-like environments, as well as robot overall performance. In robotics applications, context recognition is usually performed using time of day and three subsystems: localization, perception, and dialog. The proposal described in this paper adds to this approach a fifth item to classify user activities: an environmental recognition component. The Environment Recognition Component (ERC) described in this article uses convolutional neuronal networks to classify ordinary acoustic signals present in indoor environments. This information is used by a second element, the Context Recognition Component (CRC) that infers the user activity using propositional calculus. The empirical evaluation of the framework presents an 86% of accuracy at ERC level, and the CRC inference system provides three times more contexts than the approach without ERC. [less ▲]

Analysing the Computational Competences Acquired by K-12 Students When Lectured by Robotic and Human Teachers

in International Journal of Social Robotics (2017)

Robots have been proposed as teaching assistants for children, but few studies have measured their effectiveness. This paper describes an experiment using the Baxter robot for teaching basic computational ... [more ▼]

Robots have been proposed as teaching assistants for children, but few studies have measured their effectiveness. This paper describes an experiment using the Baxter robot for teaching basic computational principles. We compare acquired abilities in students with a control group lectured by a human teacher in a traditional way. These abilities are focused on the application of computational principles to a different domain. Experiment description, data analysis and discussion of the results are also presented in this paper. [less ▲]

May I teach you? Students' behavior when lectured by robotic vs. human teachers

in Computers in Human Behavior (2017)

\textcopyright 2017 Elsevier Ltd. Social robots have been and are currently being used in many projects, research initiatives and experiments, but we know relatively little about them compared to humans ... [more ▼]

\textcopyright 2017 Elsevier Ltd. Social robots have been and are currently being used in many projects, research initiatives and experiments, but we know relatively little about them compared to humans when performing a social task such as teaching. Using an experiment in which a robot and a human teacher were used for teaching computational concepts to a group of K-12 students, the main goal of this paper is not to analyze the scores obtained in the post-test performed, but to focus on the students' attitudes towards robots. In order to do this, a version of the NARS and RAS questionnaires, adapted for children, was used. The analysis of the results of these questionnaires considers differences between age groups and students lectured by a robot vs. a human teacher. We conclude that age is the main factor that affects students' attitudes towards robots, although we also found other differences between the robot and the human teacher group. [less ▲]

Cybersecurity of Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Privacy and Safety

in Dekoulis, George (Ed.) Robotics - Legal, Ethical and Socioeconomic Impacts (2017)

Robots and autonomous systems in general are set to suffer similar cybersecurity problems that computers have been facing for decades. This is not only worrying for critical tasks such as those performed ... [more ▼]

Robots and autonomous systems in general are set to suffer similar cybersecurity problems that computers have been facing for decades. This is not only worrying for critical tasks such as those performed by surgical, or military robots but also for household robots such as vacuum cleaners or for teleconference robots compromise privacy and safety of their owners. What will happen if these robots are hacked? This study presents a survey on the cybersecurity attacks associated with service robots, and as a result, a taxonomy that classifies the risks faced by users when using service robots, distinguish ing between security and safety threads, is presented. We also present the robot software development phase as one the most relevant ones for the security of robots. [less ▲]