The workshop was scheduled for November 11th, 2021 from 16:00 Singapore time (9:00 CET) to 20:30 Singapore time (13:30 CET).
Program at a glance
| SST | CET | Program |
| 16:00 16:05 | 9:00 9:05 | Opening |
| 16:05 17:00 | 9:05 10:00 | First Keynote Speaker: Prof. Mark Neerincx “Social robots that stimulate and harmonize people with dementia’s engagement into daily activities” |
| 17:00 18:00 | 10:00 11:00 | Session 1 : Paper presentations |
| 18:00 18:15 | 11:00 11:15 | Break |
| 18:15 19:10 | 11:15 12:10 | Second Keynote Speaker: Dr. Astrid Weiss “Caring Robots // Robotic Care – Will we ever have robotic carers?” |
| 19:10 20:10 | 12:10 13:10 | Session 2 : Paper presentations |
| 20:10 20:30 | 13:10 13:30 | Discussion and Wrap Up |
Session 1
Detailed program of Session 1 from 10:00 CET to 11:00 CET
| SST | CET | Paper presentations (10 minutes + 5 for questions) |
| 17:00 17:15 | 10:00 10:15 | Alessandra Sorrentino, Gustavo Assuncao, Filippo Cavallo, Laura Fiorini, Paulo Menezes “Modeling affective empathy by teaching emotion expressions to a social robot” This work aims to develop an automatic framework that could be used to foster robotic affective empathy during human-robot interaction. As a first step, we implemented a deep reinforcement learning algorithm, which allows the robot to learn the correct association between the emotion and its current expression. In this work, a total of 52 facial expressions are included to represent primary emotions. The learning process is performed online, by replicating the robot’s facial configuration of a web interface. A total of 105 participants was recruited in the teaching process. The results show that the algorithm converged towards a subset of 11 facial representations, which the robot should display when expressing its own emotions in an interaction scenario. |
| 17:15 17:30 | 10:15 10:30 | Sergio Russo, Letizia Lorusso, Francesco Giuliani “The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) test carried out with the support of a social robot” We present a study aimed at assessing the feasibility of testing sessions for cognitive impairment by means of social robotic technology enriched with systems to detect the psychophysical and emotional state of patients. |
| 17:30 17:45 | 10:30 10:45 | Ilaria Ciuffreda, Giulio Amabili, Sara Casaccia, Marco Benaducci, Arianna Margaritini, Nicole Morresi, Fabrizio Marconi, Alexandre De Masi, Janna Alberts, Judith de Koning, Raymond Cuijpers, Gian Marco Revel, Henk Herman Nap, Martijn Vasternburg, Elvira Maranesi, Roberta Bevilacqua “Design and development of a technological platform based on a sensorized social robot for supporting older adults and caregivers: GUARDIAN ecosystem” In this paper, a new ecosystem to support older adults and caregivers in an indoor living environment is proposed. The GUARDIAN ecosystem consists of a sen-sorized social assistive robot (SAR) and two mobile applications (one for care-givers and one for the older user) which are integrated to satisfy the user’s needs. Starting from a user-centred and value-sensitive co-design approach, four user requirements have been identified: monitoring, reminding, social companionship and coaching. User requirements were translated into technical requirements to develop a flexible system architecture. The system architecture was tested in a controlled environment and results show a successful rate of 100% for the moni-toring, reminder and social companion test conditions. In addition, preliminary pi-lot tests with eight end users show that the ecosystem satisfies the user require-ments showing the feasibility of the application of the GUARDIAN system in living indoor environment. Based on the results, an improved version under de-velopment will add new functionalities, in order to improve the capability of the GUARDIAN ecosystem, in terms of coaching and Human Robot Interaction (HRI). |
| 17:45 18:00 | 10:45 11:00 | Yu-Hsin Chang, Martin Rathmann, Felix Carros “How do roboticists imagine a robotised future? A Case Study on a Japanese HRI Research Project” This study deals with the making of knowledge about robots, namely how scientific works on robotics are produced. It aims at exploring the logics, ideas and visions of roboticists, when these robot makers in the academia develop new robotic systems and functions. In other words, the roboticists, who do research on robots, are the research object of this study. In doing so, this research pays careful attention to the following questions: (i) How do robotic researchers frame their research question? (ii) Which assumptions do they take for granted? (iii) How do they picture a robotised future? In short, this sociological study is especially interested in what had rarely been questioned within robotics: the examination of the conventional methodology of robotic research, the untold connection of experimental design and researchers’ visions of ideal human–robot relationship. |
Session 2
Detailed program of Session 2 from 12:10 CET to 13:10 CET
| SST | CET | Paper presentations (10 minutes + 5 for questions) |
| 19:10 19:25 | 12:10 12:25 | Stephanie Jansen, Marina Hurmuz, Susanna Del Signore, Gianluca Zia, Stefania Del Signore, Lex van Velsen “Social robots to support rehabilitation training and improve healthcare delivery: The SCOTTY project” The ambition of the SoCial rOboTs to support rehabilitation Training and improve healthcare deliverY (SCOTTY) project is to innovate rehabilitation care and the field of social robotics by merging the two disciplines. The pri-mary aim of the SCOTTY project is to develop monitoring, training, and so-cializing functionality for the Pepper Robot, geared towards older adults, to implement it in rehabilitation care, and to evaluate the effects of this im-plementation with a clinical, user experience, and economic focus. The SCOTTY project runs from March 1, 2021, to May 31, 2022. Results of the project will be reported continuously within and outside the DIH-HERO consortium. |
| 19:25 19:40 | 12:25 12:40 | Alessandro Umbrico, Marco Benaducci, Gloria Beraldo, Roberta Bevilacqua, Filippo Cavallo, Amedeo Cesta, Riccardo De Benedictis, Laura Fiorini, Francesca Fracasso, Carlo La Viola, Federica Cornacchia Loizzo, Elvira Maranesi, Andrea Orlandini, Gabriella Cortellessa “Towards Robotic-Aided Physical Therapy” The paper shows first steps towards the use of socially assistive robotics within rehabilitation programs for patients affected by Parkinson’s Disease. The contribution of the paper specifically focuses on the design and integration of AI-based technologies to enrich a Social Robot with the cognitive capabilities autonomously and proactively support therapist and patients during a rehabilitation session. |
| 19:40 19:55 | 12:40 12:55 | Antonio Adriella, Carme Torras, Giullem Alenya “Learning In Situ Personalised Robot Assistance From Therapist’s Demonstrations and Knowledge” Socially Assistive Robots have the potential to augment and enhance therapist’s effectiveness in repetitive tasks such as cognitive therapies. However, their contribution has generally been limited as domain experts have not been fully involved in the entire pipeline of the design process as well as in the automatisation of the robots’ behaviour. In this article, we present aCtive leARning agEnt aSsiStive bEhaviouR (CARESSER), a novel framework that actively learns robotic assistive behaviour by leveraging the therapist’s expertise (knowledge-driven approach) and their demonstrations (data-driven approach). By exploiting that hybrid approach, the presented method enables in situ fast learning, in a fully autonomous fashion, of personalised patient-specific policies. With the purpose of evaluating our framework, we conducted two user studies in a daily care centre in which older adults affected by mild dementia and mild cognitive impairment (N=22) were requested to solve cognitive exercises with the support of a therapist and later of a robot endowed with CARESSER. Results showed that: i) the robot managed to keep the patients’ performance stable during the sessions even more so than the therapist; ii) the assistance offered by the robot during the sessions eventually matched the therapist’s preferences. |
| 19:55 20:10 | 12:55 13:10 | Felix Carros, Adrian Preussner “Financial and Work Process related Aspects of Care Robotics” Research on social assistance robots in care environments is happening since decades, yet the robots are rarely seen in care homes, despite the increasing pressure on the sector. With this submission we want to show financial and work process related aspects of robotic systems in care environments. Our findings originate from 66 interviews with stakeholders from the care sector. We present and discuss dimensions of help for care workers through robotic systems with the according visions of stakeholders and financial aspects of the robot usage. |