Albert De Beir

New frontiers in the rubber hand experiment: when a robotic hand becomes one’s own

The rubber hand illusion is an experimental paradigm in which participants consider a fake hand to be part of their body. This paradigm has been used in many domains of psychology (i.e., research on pain, body ownership, agency) and is of clinical importance. The classic rubber hand paradigm nevertheless suffers from limitations, such as the absence of active motion or the reliance on approximate measurements, which makes strict experimental conditions difficult to obtain. Here, we report on the development of a novel technology—a robotic, user- and computer-controllable hand—that addresses many of the limitations associated with the classic rubber hand paradigm. Because participants can actively control the robotic hand, the device affords higher realism and authenticity. Our robotic hand has a comparatively low cost and opens up novel and innovative methods. In order to validate the robotic hand, we have carried out three experiments. The first two studies were based on previous research using the rubber hand, while the third was specific to the robotic hand. We measured both sense of agency and ownership. Overall, results show that participants experienced a “robotic hand illusion” in the baseline conditions. Furthermore, we also replicated previous results about agency and ownership.

How to Build a Supervised Autonomous System for Robot-Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through remote control of the robot in so-called Wizard of Oz (WoZ) paradigms.However, there is a need to increase the autonomy of the robot both to lighten the burden on human therapists (who have to remain in control and, importantly, supervise the robot) and to provide a consistent therapeutic experience. This paper seeks to provide insight into increasing the autonomy level of social robots in therapy to move beyond WoZ. With the final aim of improved human-human social interaction for the children, this multidisciplinary research seeks to facilitate the use of social robots as tools in clinical situations by addressing the challenge of increasing robot autonomy.We introduce the clinical framework in which the developments are tested, alongside initial data obtained from patients in a first phase of the project using a WoZ set-up mimicking the targeted supervised-autonomy behaviour. We further describe the implemented system architecture capable of providing the robot with supervised autonomy.

Probolino: A Portable Low-Cost Social Device for Home-Based Autism Therapy

Recent research has shown that social robots are beneficial in therapeutic interventions for children with autism in clinical environment. For the generalization of the skills learned in therapy sessions outside the clinic or laboratory, the therapeutic process needs to be continued at home. Therefore, social robotic devices should be designed with smaller sizes, lower costs, and higher levels of autonomy. This paper presents the development of Probolino, a portable and low-cost social robotic device based on the social robot Probo. The system functions as a “robotic cognitive orthotic” which is an intermediate step between a computer and a robot without motion. Interactive games are developed to help children with autism spectrum disorders make social decisions in daily activities. These activities are configured in a time-line by therapists or parents via a web interface. Probolino is expected to enhance the efficiency of current robot-assisted autism therapy.

Enhancing Emotional Facial Expressiveness on NAO: A Case Study Using Pluggable Eyebrows

Robots can express emotions for better human robot interaction. In this field, NAO robot is a platform widely used. This robot mainly expresses emotions by gestures and colored LED eyes, but, due to its white flat and inanimate face, the robot cannot express facial expressions. This work proposes a pluggable eyebrows device enabling NAO to express anger or sadness while performing other tasks. This device is plug-and-play and directly controllable by NAO’s development environments. Additionally, we developed a platform independent mapping of eyebrows angles with emotions. We first conducted an experiment that qualitatively attests the interest of this device. Three following experiments were conducted to: (1) confirm the relation between eyebrows angle and expressed emotion; (2) evaluate different shapes in order to select the most appropriate one; (3) prove that NAO is able to use the eyebrows to express emotions while performing non emotional tasks.

Reaching and pointing gestures calculated by a generic gesture system for social robots

Since the implementation of gestures for a certain robot generally involves the use of specific information about its morphology, these gestures are not easily transferable to other robots. To cope with this problem, we proposed a generic method to generate gestures, constructed independently of any configuration and therefore useable for different robots. In this paper, we discuss the novel end-effector mode of the method, which can be used to calculate gestures whereby the position of the end-effector is important, for example for reaching for or pointing towards an object. The interesting and innovative feature of our method is its high degree of flexibility in both the possible configurations wherefore the method can be used, as in the gestures to be calculated. The method was validated on several configurations, including those of the robots ASIMO, NAO and Justin. In this paper, the working principles of the end-effector mode are discussed and a number of results are presented. The proposed method can be used to generate gestures for an arbitrary social robot.This paper focuses on how reaching and pointing gestures are calculated.DH-parameters, orientation of the base frames and joint limits are used as input.Joint angles are calculated using IK with a cost-function for natural postures.The method was validated on several robots, including NAO, Justin and ASIMO.

ROBEE: A homeostatic-based social behavior controller for robots in Human-Robot Interaction experiments

This paper presents the development and implementation of Robee, a novel social behavior controller for robots with a focus on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) studies. Using the homeostatic drive theory, Robee selects the behaviors in order to maintain the needs, mainly psychological and social, within an acceptable range. We propose a hybrid concept for the decision making process, which combines the hierarchical approach and Parallel-rooted, Ordered, Slip-stack Hierarchical (POSH) architecture. Emotions are mapped in a two-dimensional space consisting of valence and arousal. A joint attention HRI experiment with children and NAO robot has been conducted showing the usage of the controller. Robee is expected to be implemented in more robotic platforms.

Evolutionary Method for Robot Morphology: Case Study of Social Robot Probo

The appearance of robots is often made arbitrary as it relies more on guidelines than on a rigorous methodology. This paper presents a novel method of using genetic algorithms (GA) to improve the appearance of social robots with human feedback. Such general methods are interesting as they do not require prior artistic experience from the designer and can integrate the end-user in the loop. As a proof of concept, we carry out a case study by applying this method to the new design of the social robot Probo. Using designer feedback, the robot is evolved from its original design over five populations composed of 15 individuals. An online survey shows that the evolved designs are significantly improved compared to the original. These results indicate the feasibility of the method employed and gives rise to the possibility of non-technical end-users influencing the design of robot morphologies adapted for specific human-robot interaction requirements.

A Survey on Behavior Control Architectures for Social Robots in Healthcare Interventions

The use of Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) in healthcare interventions has increasingly received research attention. However, a lot of RAT studies are conducted under Wizard of Oz (WoZ) techniques in which the robots are teleoperated or pre-programmed. The trend of RAT is moving towards (partially) autonomous control in which the robot behavior control architecture plays a significant role in creating effective human–robot interaction by engaging and motivating human users into the therapeutic processes. This paper describes the state-of-the-art of the autonomous behavior control architectures currently developed for social robots in healthcare interventions, considering both clinical and exploratory studies. We also present certain requirements that an architecture used in RAT study should acquire, which provide roboticists and therapists an inspiration to orient their designs and implementations on the basis of their targeted RAT applications.

Humanoid Robot Pepper at a Belgian Chocolate Shop

Humanoid robots hold potential to offer customer experience for bricks-and-mortar stores. Participants took part in a quiz on the topic chocolate in an experimental field study at »The Belgian Chocolate House» in Brussels airport in which a tablet kiosk and a Pepper robot were compared. The experiments showed that offering the quiz on a humanoid robot provided better results in terms of shopper impressions and behavior.

Generic method for generating blended gestures and affective functional behaviors for social robots

Gesturing is an important modality in human–robot interaction. Up to date, gestures are often implemented for a specific robot configuration and therefore not easily transferable to other robots. To cope with this issue, we presented a generic method to calculate gestures for social robots. The method was designed to work in two modes to allow the calculation of different types of gestures. In this paper, we present the new developments of the method. We discuss how the two working modes can be combined to generate blended emotional expressions and deictic gestures. In certain situations, it is desirable to express an emotional condition through an ongoing functional behavior. Therefore, we implemented the possibility of modulating a pointing or reaching gesture into an affective gesture by influencing the motion speed and amplitude of the posture. The new implementations were validated on virtual models with different configurations, including those of the robots NAO and Justin.