Socially assistive robots have been used successfully for improvement of communication skills of young children. Such robots need to attract children's attention and stimulate sustainable interactions. Many recent research studies propose various approaches for increasing of interaction effectiveness of such robots. In this study, we investigate the effect of robotic movements with animacy on the visual attention of young children. For the experiments, we used the TurtleBot robot. The effect of three different robot movement patterns were explored with the conducted tests: simple circle movement, inanimated movement, and animated movement. Thirty four children (21 males, 13 females, Mean of ages: 4.5) participated in an experiment. Results show that robot movement raises visual attention. Most of the children demonstrated increased interest toward animated robotic movement than simple motion. The animated movement that elicits much interest depends on children's age. The findings of this study contribute to effective use of interactive robots in education and therapy of young children and children with developmental disorder.

It is an advantage to use robots in autism therapy since they provide repetitive stimuli during the learning of social skills. A detailed exploration is required to design assistive robots for autism therapy with higher effectiveness. This study has investigated the effectiveness of an interactive robot's feedback during autism therapy for improving specific social skills of the children. The experiment described in this study is that children with autism engaged with an interactive system to perform affective touch behaviour and received the robot's visual and auditory feedback. Results showed that the presence of an interactive robot's feedback triggered more effective children's touch behaviour.

We propose a new method for the measurement of multi-axis contact force by using vision-based fluid-type tactile sensor. The proposed sensor can also estimate the multimodal tactile information such as the slippage, the shape, the contact region and the location of the contacted object. Multi-axis contact force is transformed from the elastic membrane tensional force on the touchpad surface, and the touchpad inner pressure measured by the pressure transducer. We obtain the tensional force by solving the equilibrium equations developed in each compartmentalized segment of the membrane, based on the shape information of the touchpad. The proposed method is general and can be applied to various touchpad contact situations. The usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated through experimental results.

Previous researches, in the field of robot assisted therapy, suggested that communications with robots encourage autistic children to have more positive reaction to the robots' behavior, and this seems to be a reliable approach to improve the social interaction and communication skills of autistic children. However, most of the researches focused on improving only some limited aspects of the autistic children's social communication problems and it is difficult to evaluate the training with current technology. Thus, in the present study, we suggest a training robot to improve the adjustability of autistic children's way of communications through touching. First, we explore three different ways of touching and compare different force levels of touching for autistic children to those for non-autistic children. As a result, non-autistic children have shown a definite pattern on the way of touching, while there is no pattern in autistic children's one. Second, we investigate the efficiency of therapy with the robot, when the robot shows its expression to a person with autism. As a result, the participant has indicated that better success rate with the presence of expression from robot.

Bilateral movement training based on robot-aided rehabilitation systems has been attracting a lot of attention as a post-stroke motor rehabilitation protocol. In this paper, we investigate the effects of different conditions which were imposed on the unimpaired upper extremity to find exact therapeutic conditions for planning more appropriate bilateral movement training. Active/passive, loaded/non-loaded, and unimanual/bimanual movements were used as the experimental conditions. Twenty subjects were randomly assigned to one of four groups, namely the passive group(PG), the active non-load group(ANLG), active load group(ALG), and the control group(CG) and were asked to perform tasks with their left upper extremity with respect to the conditions. The comparison results revealed that the active loaded group showed the recovery time from adaptation was faster than another groups.

In this paper, we propose a new method to estimate the shape and irregularity of objects by a vision-based tactile sensor, which consists of a CCD camera, LED lights, transparent acrylic plate, and a touchpad which consists of an elastic membrane filled with translucent red water. Intensities of red, green and blue bands of the traveling light in the touchpad are analyzed in this study to estimate the shape/irregularity of the object. The LED light traveling in the touchpad is scattered and absorbed by the red pigment in the fluid. The depth of the touchpad is estimated by using the intensity of the light obtained from the red-green-blue (RGB) values of the image, in consideration of the scattering and reflection effects. The reflection coefficient that depends on the shape of the membrane, was decoupled in the proposed formulation. The intensity of the traveling light is represented with the geometrical parameters of the touchpad surface. In order to reduce the approximation error caused by unmodeled factors, we compensate the error by using a function of the deformation of the membrane. The validation of the proposed method is confirmed through experimental results.

In this paper, we present some results from the study on the impedance characteristics of a human arm during the execution of vehicle steering control tasks by using a joystick-type steering device. We propose a new model of human-machine interaction where the damping coefficient of the interface device can be tuned to match the impedance characteristics of the human arm. To verify the proposed model, we developed a special experimental setup. We used a robot and force/torque sensors to simulate the joystick operation. We explored human-machine interactions when the operator uses only one hand to control the vehicle. The reaction forces of the joystick were simulated by a virtual impedance field tuned to match human arm impedance. In the tests, we simulate situations when the movement of the joystick in the forward-backward direction sets the speed of the vehicle while the lateral rotation of the same control stick changes the turning radius of the vehicle. The robot allowed us to simulate various impedance characteristics. With the tests, we investigated the operability of the simulated vehicle by tuning the viscosity coefficient of the joystick in order to match it with the stationary human arm impedance and time-varying human arm impedance. The test results allowed us to propose a new method to improve the operability of a joystick-type steering device, based on the online adaptive matching of the impedance characteristics of the human arm. The usefulness of the proposed method is confirmed through experiments.

In this paper, we propose a new method for calculation of the contact region and the location of an object from the data acquired from vision-based tactile sensor, which touch pad is an elastic transparent membrane of silicon rubber with dotted pattern printed on its inner side. The membrane is filled with translucent red colored water. The algorithm for calculation of the contact region is based on the curvature radius of the elastic membrane and considerations of the conditions for balance between the tensional forces of the membrane and the inner pressure. The location of the object is calculated from the relations between the translational displacement of the object and the displacement of the contacting dots. The rotation angles of the object are estimated from the rotation matrix of the three basis vectors by accumulating changes of the rotation angles of the rotation matrix for applying to the object rolling on the sensor. This paper also provides some experimental results that demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method. Proposed method can be applied in many robot tasks that require dexterity of the robot hands.

In this paper, we propose a new method to improve the operability of a joystick-type steering device, in consideration of the impedance characteristics of human arm. We develop the robot manipulator-based joystick for one-handed operation of the vehicle, where the reaction force of the joystick is controlled by the virtual impedance field tuned to match human arm impedance. Since the longitudinal and lateral movements of the steering system are coupled, the rotational movement of the joystick on the frontal plane was employed to represent the signals from the accelerators and break pedal. We proposed an extended man-machine system formulation, where the damping coefficient, one of important mechanical characteristics, is tuned to match the impedance characteristics of human arm. We investigate the operability when the viscosity coefficient is tuned to match stationary human arm impedance, and time-varying human arm impedance. The usefulness of the proposed method is confirmed through the experiments.

We consider the design of a modular hybrid functional electrical stimulation (FES) system for an injured person. We propose a system using an assistant robot to follow the FES performance, as FES control has many uncertainties in characteristics. The assistant robot used is a 3-link serial type, and attached to the injured person to actively assist the FES performance. The assistant robot must be very simple, light, and can be easily attached to the injured person. We constitute various types of human models which can be used to show the exact actions and muscle function characteristics. Furthermore, we propose a control system for the model of an injured person fitted with the assistant robot. Finally, we show that a robust performance of the injured person has been achieved in the standing motion using the modular hybrid FES system.