Socially assistive robotics: helping through social interaction - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

• Social Robots
• what’s out there, what’s coming
• What they’re good at now
• and not so good at
• Socially assistive robotics:

helping through social interaction

• How can they be useful in healthcare?
• Social robots - what’s “easy”
• and what isn’t
• Lessons for practical deployments

Belin inda da Ward

Project Manager – Humanoid Robotics

Masayoshi Son Softbank Founder and CEO Information Revolution – Happiness for Everyone

ST Solutions Australia

Social robots are coming…

TAPIA ZENBO SANBOT AIDO NINEBOT NAO iCUB ROBOTHESPIAN HOVIS ROMEO MIIM OP2 ASIMO HUBO

But what can they do?

BAXTER PR2 TIAGO PIONEER MANIPULATOR JACO REEM (CHIP)

Beyond Entertainment / Novelty

Socially assistive robotics Helping through social interaction, rather than physical action

• Monitoring
• Coaching / training
• Motivation
• Companionship

Scenario 1:

• Pepper responds to frequently

asked questions

• Will people in a public hospital be

comfortable interacting with a robot?

Scenario 2:

• Pepper surveys knowledge and

attitudes about the flu virus and vaccinations.

• Can Pepper be effective at delivering

public health information?

Pepper – Skills and experience

Already good at

• Attracting attention
• Recognising people
• Tracking faces
• Understanding human

speech*

• Scripted conversation
• Movement

More difficult

• Navigation
• Understanding environment
• Learning about an unknown

environment

• Understanding human movement
• Understanding human behaviour
• Contextual (situational) conversation

Easy

Hard

Skil ills ls for

• r so

socia ial l rob

• bot
• ts

Text to speech Scripted interactions Constrained speech recognition Question - Answer Free-form dialogue

Contextual dialogue

Manipulation Moving

Avoiding static obstacles Navigating known environment

Building a map

Understanding intent

Semantic understanding

Object recognition

Updating a map Grasping

Multi-party conversation One-on-one interactions

Understanding emotions Facial recognition

Learning stairs daylight doors

A word of caution

• Technology champion on the ground is critical
• You also need champions in high places
• expectation management is important
• Your wifi will cause you headaches
• make friends with your IT providers
• IT security will be paranoid
• Keep it simple and secure
• Everyone will be paranoid
• Their worst fears are unfounded
• Privacy fears
• Lessons for practical deployments

Lessons from the field