Haptic Intelligence

Evaluation of a Touch-Perceiving, Responsive Robot Koala for Children with Autism

2021

Miscellaneous

hi

Social touch is a powerful component of human life, but current socially assistive robots have almost no touch-perception capabilities. In particular, there has been much interest in using socially assistive robots to help teach and assist children with autism. We propose that such robot companions could better understand and react to a child’s needs if they utilized augmented tactile sensing that captures the applied gesture and force intensity in addition to the more limited information measured by standard binary tactile sensors, which typically provide only contact location and timing. We present HERA, the Haptic Empathetic Robot Animal, as a touch-perceptive social robot for children with autism. In this paper, we propose a user study that aims to investigate whether HERA can help children with autism learn to use safe and appropriate touch behavior during social interaction.

Author(s): Rachael Bevill Burns and Hasti Seifi and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
Year: 2021
Month: March
Department(s): Haptic Intelligence
Research Project(s):
Bibtex Type: Miscellaneous (misc)
Paper Type: Workshop
Address: Virtual
How Published: Workshop paper (4 pages) presented at the HRI Workshop on Workshop YOUR study design! Participatory critique and refinement of participants' studies
State: Published

BibTex 

@misc{Burns21-HRIWS-Evaluation,
  title = {Evaluation of a Touch-Perceiving, Responsive Robot Koala for Children with Autism},
  author = {Burns, Rachael Bevill and Seifi, Hasti and Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.},
  howpublished = {Workshop paper (4 pages) presented at the HRI Workshop on Workshop YOUR study design! Participatory critique and refinement of participants' studies},
  address = {Virtual},
  month = mar,
  year = {2021},
  doi = {},
  month_numeric = {3}
}