Socially Assistive Robots for Healthcare

Robot-Mediated Listening Comprehension Intervention for Children with ASD

Description: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a life-long developmental condition which affects an individual’s ability to communicate and relate to others. Despite such challenges, early intervention during childhood development has shown to have positive long-term benefits for individuals with ASD. Namely, early childhood development of communicative speech skills has shown to improve future literacy and academic achievement. However, the delivery of such interventions is often time-consuming. Socially assistive robots are a potential strategic technology which could help support intervention delivery for children with ASD and increase the number of individuals that healthcare professionals can positively impact. Here, we present a pilot study to evaluate the efficacy of a robot-mediated listening comprehension intervention for children with ASD. For more information please read the following publications: https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2021-0005 and https://doi.org/10.1080/10400435.2021.1930284.

Collaborators: Oakland University Applied Behavior Analysis Clinic

Robots Learning from Human Demonstration

Learning from Demonstration for primitive robot actions

Description: Robot with upper humanoid torso learning primitive robot actions (gestures) from natural human demonstrations using skeleton tracking with a ASUS Xtion sensor. For more information please read the following publication: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00621-4

Collaborators: University of Toronto

Comparing Teleoperation Modalities for Delivering Healthcare Interventions

Description: In this study, we evaluated which modality would be most effective and efficient for healthcare professionals to teleoperate a socially assistive robot to deliver healthcare interventions. For more information please read the following publication: [PDF]

Collaborators: Oakland University Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Clinic

Autonomous Vehicles and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Towards a Driver Monitoring System for Estimating Driver Situational Awareness

Description: Autonomous vehicle technology is rapidly developing but the current state-of-the-art still has limitations and requires frequent human intervention. However, handovers from an autonomous vehicle to a human driver are challenging because a human operator may be unaware of the vehicle surroundings during a handover which can lead to dangerous driving outcomes. There is presently an urgent need to develop advanced driver-assistance systems capable of monitoring driver situational awareness within an autonomous vehicle and intelligently handing-over control to a human driver in emergency situations. Towards this goal, we present the development and evaluation of a vision-based system that identifies visual cues of a driver’s situational awareness including their: head pose, eye pupil position, average head movement rate and visual focus of attention. For more information please read the following publications: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN46459.2019.8956378 and https://doi.org/10.4271/2020-01-1037.

Collaborators: Dura Automotive Inc.

Project Sponsors

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the project sponsors (i.e., National Science Foundation, Michigan Space Grant Consortium, Automotive Research Center, and Oakland University)