Amedeo Cesta

Telepresence Robot at Home: A Long-Term Case Study

The paper presents the current findings of an almost one-year case study of fielding the Giraff robot in a real home. The testing phase, which is still running, involves an older user, affected by Parkinsons disease, and his family, in the daily usage of a telepresence robot. Initial evidence show that Giraff has become part of the daily routine of the user being judged as a valuable tool for communication and close connection with the remote user. In general, the attitude of the user towards the aid remains stable being constantly positive over time. Nevertheless we also noted an impact of the technology robustness on user’s acceptance that will be further investigated in this continuation of the study.

Science Operations Pre-Planning & Optimization using AI constraint-resolution - the APSI Case Study 1

This paper gives a preliminary overview on activities within an ongoing project aimed at building a planning and scheduling software framework to support mission planners in ∞exibly support operations in ESA missions. These recent developments are in the scope of the Advanced Planning and Scheduling Initiative (APSI) an activity funded by ESA/ESOC and started in late 2006. In particular we describe here the test of the software framework in developing a support tool for Long and Medium Term Planning for Mars Express. The goal of this study, also know as Case Study 1 for APSI, is to generate a pre-optimized skeleton plan for science, communication and spacecraft maintenance slots, to be used as a support in the dialogue between the science and operation team in early pre-planning of activities. This problem has been identifled as an example of time consuming process that can potentially beneflt from the use of a support tool that performs a plan optimization phase.

From Sensor Data to User Services in GiraffPlus

This paper presents an ongoing effort to create added value complete services for end users on top of an AAL continuous data gathering environment. It first presents the general architecture proposed by the GiraffPlus project for long term monitoring of older users at home, then describes the main choices concerning the middleware (universAAL compliant), the long-term data storage, and a user-oriented component, called DVPIS, dedicated to interaction with different users of the AAL environment. The current status of a deployed version of the system is then shortly described.

Robot Interface Design: The Giraff Telepresence Robot for Social Interaction

This paper presents the outcome of the Workshop on Robot Interface Design, which was held in Genoa (Italy) over the months of January and February 2014 and was jointly organized by Polytechnic School at the University of Genoa and the National Research Council. The aim of the workshop was to study the design of physical, functional and graphical interfaces for a telepresence assistive robot, starting from the analysis of the current features of a commercial robot called Giraff (http://www.giraff.org). The fielding of the Giraff robot has been studied (within an EU-funded AAL project: ExCITE—http://www.excite-project.eu) in three different European countries as an ICT solution to support elderly people and to enhance social interaction with relatives and caregivers. The evaluation with real end-users of the Giraff brought to light a set of user requirements and issues to be improved in the robotic platform. This workshop sought to present the aspects connected to the design (in which participants had specific expertise), and to the users perception of the robot within a domestic environment. Particular attention was paid to the design of volumes, shapes and anthropometric relationships as well as elaborations on chromatic aspects and the exploitation of different kinds of material. Some of the main results of the workshop were: a design process involving different professionals such as designers, engineers and psychologists working in close contact with a group of end-users; a set of possible modifications/extensions of the robotic platform; a set of new design concepts featuring a higher level of product emotionality.

An AI Based Online Scheduling Controller for Highly Automated Production Systems

Highly automated production systems are conceived to efficiently handle evolving production requirements. This concerns any level of the system from the configuration and control to the management of production. The proposed work deals with the production scheduling level. The authors present an AI-based online scheduling controller for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMSs) whose main advantage is its capacity of dynamically interpreting and adapting any production anomaly or system misbehavior by regenerating on-line a new schedule. The performance of the controller has been assessed by running a set of closed-loop experiments based on a real-world industrial case study. Results demonstrate that the capability of automatically synthesizing plans together with recovery actions severely contribute to ensure a high and continuous production rate.

Human—machine cooperation in space environments

Space mission environments are characterized by the presence of both human operators and advanced automated technology. One relevant aspect in this context is the degree of interaction between these two entities and, in particular, the role of the human agent with respect to his/her collaboration with potentially overwhelming technology. In designing innovative work environments, a certain degree of freedom must be maintained to allow humans and machines to cooperate and adapt to unforeseen contingencies. This paper describes a human — machine cooperation approach to address some of the new challenges introduced by user — system interaction in space missions. Specifically, we will elaborate on the need of retaining a level of flexibility in subdividing responsibilities between autonomous systems and human operators by encouraging the development of mixed systems that integrate the capabilities of both entities. Based on our experience in developing frameworks for space missions, we briefly report on two examples of decision-support tools, pointing out the human aspects that need to be taken into account as well as the beneficial effects of synergies between technology developers and experts in different fields like Cognitive Psychology and Human Computer Interaction. While the described experiences are mainly related to space mission control centres, the detected problems as well as the proposed solutions are, to some extent, extensible to manned missions in outer space.