Assistive mobile robots, such as intelligent wheelchairs, that can navigate autonomously in response to high level commands from a user can greatly benefit people with cognitive and physical disabilities by increasing their mobility. In this work, we address the problem of safe, comfortable, and customizable motion planning of such assistive mobile robots. We recognize that for an assistive robot to be acceptable to human users, its motion should be safe and comfortable. Further, different users should be able to customize the motion according to their comfort. We formalize the notion of motion comfort as a discomfort measure that can be minimized to compute comfortable trajectories, and identify several properties that a trajectory must have for the motion to be comfortable. We develop a motion planning framework for planning safe, comfortable, and customizable trajectories in small-scale space. This framework removes the limitations of existing methods for planning motion of a wheeled mobile robot moving on a plane, none of which can compute trajectories with all the properties necessary for comfort. We formulate a discomfort cost functional as a weighted sum of total travel time, time integral of squared tangential jerk, and time integral of squared normal jerk. We then define the problem of safe and comfortable motion planning as that of minimizing this discomfort such that the trajectories satisfy boundary conditions on configuration and its higher derivatives, avoid obstacles, and satisfy constraints on curvature, speed, and acceleration. This description is transformed into a precise mathematical problem statement using a general nonlinear constrained optimization approach. The main idea is to formulate a well-posed infinite-dimensional optimization problem and use a conforming finite-element discretization to transform it into a finite-dimensional problem for a numerical solution. We also outline a method by which a user may customize the motion and present some guidelines for conducting human user studies to validate or refine the discomfort measure presented in this work. Results show that our framework is capable of reliably planning trajectories that have all the properties necessary for comfort. We believe that our work is an important first step in developing autonomous assistive robots that are acceptable to human users. / text

In the last decade, socially assistive robots have been used in therapeutic treatments for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Preliminary studies have demonstrated positive results using the Penguin for Autism Behavioral Intervention (PABI) developed by the AIM Lab at WPI to assist individuals diagnosed with ASDs in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy treatments. In recent years, power-efficient embedded AI computing devices have emerged as a powerful technology by reducing the complexity of the hardware platforms while providing support for parallel models of computation. This new hardware architecture seems to be an important step in the improvement of socially assistive robots in ABA therapy. In this thesis, we explore the use of a power-efficient embedded AI computing device and pre-trained deep learning models to improve PABI’s performance. Five main contributions are made in this work. First, a robot-enhanced ABA therapy framework is designed. Second, a multilayer pattern software architecture for a robot-enhanced ABA therapy framework is explored. Third, a multifactorial experiment is completed in order to benchmark the performance of three popular deep learning frameworks over the AI computing device. Experimental results demonstrate that some deep learning frameworks utilize the resources of GPU power while others utilize the multicore ARM-CPU system of the device for its parallel model of computation. Fourth, the robustness of state-of-the-art pre-trained deep learning models for feature extraction is analyzed and contrasted with the previous approach used by PABI. Experimental results indicate that pre-trained deep learning models overcome the traditional approaches in some fields; however, combining different pre-trained models in a process reduces its accuracy. Fifth, a patient-tracking algorithm based on an identity verification approach is developed to improve the autonomy, usability, and interactions of patients with the robot. Experimental results show that the developed algorithm has the potential to perform as well as the previous algorithm used by PABI based on a deep learning classifier approach.

Covid19 has brought up physical and mental challenges for all of us. However, this is even more pronounced for those who suffer from psychological pathologies, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One of the main challenges that parents of children with ASD faced during the pandemic was to plan and structure a daily routine for their kids. The disruption of the routine, together with the difficulty of combining work and the care of the child has resulted in behavioral problems and stress and anxiety for both, parents and children.    This project focused on developing an adaptive robot that helps children with autism to plan and self-manage their day, with the end goal of becoming more independent. With adaptability, agencies, senses, and playfulness at the core of the design, Pepe is meant as a support tool for these children to use along the way. By collecting information from the performance of the kid, it is able to adapt its behavior to the child´s (and parent´s) needs and desires, and therefore progress with the child. It builds upon the principles of Positive Behavioral Support to prevent emotional crises by embracing a long-run negotiation process, by which the child gets gradually closer to the end goal of self-autonomy. Intending to be adapted to the accentuated needs of these children, it combines traditional and computational elements to make the most out of the experience. This project included in-depth user research together with parents and experts, an interdisciplinary design approach, and a prototyping phase in which a prototype was tested with children with ASD.

Bakgrund: Demens är en sjukdom som drabbar en stor del av en alltmer åldrande befolkning i världen. Patienter som lider av demens kan drabbas av olika symtom som t.ex. kommunikationssvårigheter, personlighetsförändringar samt emotionell avtrubbning. Dessa symtom kan vara svåra att behandla och påverkar patienter, anhöriga och vårdpersonal. Tidigare forskning har visat att socialt assisterande robotar kan ha en god inverkan på människor som lider av demenssjukdom. Syfte: Syftet med denna litteraturstudie är att beskriva vilken inverkan på hälsan socialt assisterande robotar har hos patienter som lider av demenssjukdom.Metod: En litteraturstudie grundat på tio vetenskapliga artiklar, som tagits fram utifrån syftet. Resultat: Resultatet presenterades utifrån två kategorier, Psykosocial hälsa och Livskvalitet. Interventioner med socialt assisterande robotar hade en god inverkan på den psykosociala hälsan, medan livskvalitet påverkades med varierat resultat beroende på vilket stadie av demens som den drabbade befinner sig i. Slutsats: Sammanfattningsvis ges ett intryck av att socialt assisterande robotar kan hjälpa vårdpersonal i deras omvårdnadsarbete för patienter med demens, och att dessa robotar har en övervägande god inverkan på demensdrabbades hälsa. Betydelse: Kunskap om vad socialt assisterande robotar har för inverkan på hälsa hos demensdrabbade är angeläget, för att i framtiden kunna implementera omvårdnadsåtgärder med denna typ av robotar. / Background: Dementia is a disease which affects a large part of an increasingly aging population in the world. Patients suffering from dementia may suffer from various symptoms such as communication difficulties, personality changes and emotional blunting. These symptoms can be difficult to treat and affects patients, relatives and health professionals. Previous research has shown that socially assistive robots could have a good effect on people suffering from dementia. Aim: The purpose of this study is to describe the impact on health of socially assistive robots in patients suffering from dementia. Method: A literature study based on ten scientific articles, which has been devised based on the purpose. Results: The results are presented on the basis of two categories, psychosocial health and quality of life. Interventions with socially assistive robots had a good impact on the psychosocial health, while quality of life was affected with varied results depending on the stage of dementia that the patient is in. Conclusion: In conclusion, the given impression is that socially assistive robots could help health professionals in their nursing work for patients with dementia, and that these robots have a predominantly good effect on demented people’s health. Significance: The knowledge of how socially assistive robots impact the health of people who suffers from dementia is imperative, to eventually be able to implement nursing interventions with this type of robots.

<p>Robot grasping is emerging as an active area of research in robotics as the interest in human-robot interaction is gaining worldwide because of diverse industrial settings for sharing tasks and workplaces. It mainly focuses on the quality of generated grasps for object manipulation. However, despite advancements, these methods need to consider the human-robot collaboration settings where robots and humans will have to grasp the same objects concurrently. Therefore, generating robot grasps compatible with human preferences of simultaneously holding an object is necessary to ensure a safe and natural collaboration experience. In this work, we propose a novel, deep neural network-based method called CoGrasp that generates human-aware robot grasps by contextualizing human preference models of object grasping into the robot grasp selection process. We validate our approach against existing state-of-the-art robot grasping methods through simulated and real-robot experiments and user studies. In real robot experiments, our method achieves about 88% success rate in producing stable grasps that allow humans to interact and grasp objects simultaneously in a socially compliant manner. Furthermore, our user study with 10 independent participants indicated our approach enables a safe, natural, and socially aware human-robot objects' co-grasping experience compared to a standard robot grasping technique.</p> <p>To facilitate the grasping process, we also introduce a vision-language model that works as a pre-processing system before the grasping action takes place. In most settings, the robots are equipped with sensors that allow them to capture the scene, on which the vision model is used to do a detection task and objectify the visible contents in the environment. The language model is used to program the robot to make it possible for them to understand and execute the required sequence of tasks. Using the process of object detection, we build a set of object queries from the sensor image and allow the user to provide an input query for a task to be performed. We then perform a similarity score among these queries to localize the object that needs attention, and once identified, we can use a grasping process for the task at hand.</p>

Due to the world’s rapidly growing elderly population, dementia is becoming increasingly prevalent. This poses considerable health, social, and economic concerns as it impacts individuals, families and healthcare systems. Current research has shown that cognitive interventions may slow the decline of or improve brain functioning in older adults. This research investigates the use of intelligent socially assistive robots to engage individuals in person-centered cognitively stimulating activities. Specifically, in this thesis, a novel learning-based control architecture is developed to enable socially assistive robots to act as social motivators during an activity. A hierarchical reinforcement learning approach is used in the architecture so that the robot can learn appropriate assistive behaviours based on activity structure and personalize an interaction based on the individual’s behaviour and user state. Experiments show that the control architecture is effective in determining the robot’s optimal assistive behaviours for a memory game interaction and a meal assistance scenario.

Due to the world’s rapidly growing elderly population, dementia is becoming increasingly prevalent. This poses considerable health, social, and economic concerns as it impacts individuals, families and healthcare systems. Current research has shown that cognitive interventions may slow the decline of or improve brain functioning in older adults. This research investigates the use of intelligent socially assistive robots to engage individuals in person-centered cognitively stimulating activities. Specifically, in this thesis, a novel learning-based control architecture is developed to enable socially assistive robots to act as social motivators during an activity. A hierarchical reinforcement learning approach is used in the architecture so that the robot can learn appropriate assistive behaviours based on activity structure and personalize an interaction based on the individual’s behaviour and user state. Experiments show that the control architecture is effective in determining the robot’s optimal assistive behaviours for a memory game interaction and a meal assistance scenario.

Postpartum Depression (PPD) affects 8-15 percent of new mothers in Sweden every year. The majority of PPD cases go undetected, and only a few percent receive adequate care. New ways to detect and diagnose PPD are required. In my previous work, PPD experts expressed willingness to integrate social assistive robots (SARs) into their medical team. Moreover, we disclosed that future work was needed to include patients' perspectives on the subject. This thesis aims to provide insights from mothers with experience of mental health issues in relation to their pregnancy to elicit perceptions, attitudes and opinions towards SARs in PPD healthcare. Semi-structured interviews with participants (n=10) and a generative design activity were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. The results suggest split opinions towards SARs in PPD healthcare. Participants expressed healthcare needs, and how SARs could be used to address these issues. Opinions towards the robot's appearance, including characteristics, gender and ethnicity were also discussed. Future work including midwives, child health nurses' and perspectives is needed, as well as a larger sample of women to validate the robot’s appearance, gender and characteristics.

The research addresses current shortcomings of autonomous service robots operating in domestic environments by considering the concept of a semi-autonomous robot that would be supported by human remote operators whenever the robot cannot handle a task autonomously. The main research objective was to investigate how to design the human-robot interaction for a robotic system to assist elderly people with physical tasks at home according to this conceptual idea. The research procedure followed the principles of human-centered design and is structured into four phases: In the first phase, the context of use of the system to be designed was determined. A focus group study yielded characteristics and attitudes of several potential user groups. A survey determined the demands of elderly people and informal caregivers for services a semiautonomous assistive robot may provide. An ethnographic study investigated the living conditions of elderly people and determined technical challenges for robots operating in this type of environment. Another ethnographic study investigated the work environment in teleassistive service centers and determined the feasibility of extending their range of services to incorporate robotic teleassistance. In the second phase, two studies were carried out to understand the interaction requirements. The first study determined common types of failure of current autonomous robots and required human interventions to resolve such failure states. The second study investigated how the human assistance could be provided considering a range of potential interaction devices. In the third phase, a human-robot interaction concept with three user groups and dedicated user interfaces was designed. The concept and user interfaces were refined in an iterative process based on the results of evaluations with prospective users and received encouraging results for user satisfaction and user experience. In the fourth and final phase the utility of two specific user interface features was investigated experimentally. The first experiment investigated the utility of providing remote operators with global 3D environment maps during robot navigation and identified beneficial usage scenarios. The second experiment investigated the utility of stereoscopic display for remote manipulation and robot navigation. Results suggested temporal advantages under stereoscopic display for one of three investigated task types and potential advantages for the other two. / Forskningen behandlar problem med autonoma robotar som agerar i hemmiljö. Specifikt studeras konceptet semi-autonoma robotar, vilket innebär att robotarna stöds av mänskliga operatörer när de inte klarar uppgifter på egen hand. Syftet med forskningen är att undersöka design av människa-robotinteraktion för robotsystem som stöder äldres behov av hjälp med fysiska uppgifter i hemmiljö. Forskningen är användarcentrerad och har strukturerats i fyra faser: I den första fasen undersöktes användarkontexten för systemet. I en fokusgruppsstudie utforskades karakteristika och attityder för flera potentiella användargrupper. Kraven på en semi-autonom robot för att assistera äldre och informella vårdgivare fastställdes. En enkätstudie undersökte levnadsvillkor hos äldre för att utforska tekniska utmaningar dessa omgivningar ställer på robotar. En etnografisk studie undersökte arbetskontexten på servicecenter för teleassistans och undersökte genomförbarhet i att utöka tjänsteutbudet till att även inkludera teleassisterade robotar. I den andra fasen utfördes två studier för att få kunskap om interaktionskrav. Den första studien fastställde vanliga typer av fel som inträffar med nuvarande typer av autonoma robotar och de typer av mänsklig assistans som krävs för att hantera dessa fel. Den andra studien undersökte hur mänsklig assistans kan utformas givet en repertoar av potentiella interaktionsanordningar. I den tredje fasen utformades ett interaktionskoncept för människa-robot interaktionen för tre användargrupper med dedicerade gränssnitt. Koncepten och användargränssnitten förfinades i en iterativ process baserat på resultat från utvärderingar med tänkta användare, och resulterade i uppmuntrande resultat vad gäller användarnas uppskattning och tillfredsställelse. I den fjärde och sista fasen studerades nyttan hos två specifika gränssnitt experimentellt. Det första experimentet undersökte nyttan med att ge operatörer på distans globala 3D-kartor under robotnavigeringen och identifierade användarscenarier där detta kan utnyttjas. Det andra experimentet undersökte nyttan med en stereoskopisk display för att manipulera och navigera roboten på distans. Resultaten visar på temporala fördelar med stereoskopisk display för en av tre undersökta uppgiftstyper och potentiella fördelar för de andra två.

In this master thesis are presented design and testing processes of communication between elderly and single-purpose robot. At the beginning design and architecture of the system for testing are described. Communication understandability was checked in interviews with nineteen people. Other opinions on usability or affordability of automatic device, which is used for picking and lifting objects from the ground, are presented in this thesis. Results from questionnaires and measurements showed that working with the robot is pleasant and understandable. Even senior is able to learn effective communication with this device. The main finding is that even robot communicates through nonverbal sounds, is easy to understand it. Choosing of sound set has no influence on communication understandability.