AAAI Fall Symposium: Patrícia Alves-Oliveira on human-robot interplay design

Anton Grabolle / Higher Pictures of AI / Human-AI collaboration / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0

The AAAI Fall Symposium Sequence came about in Arlington, USA, and comprised seven completely different symposia. One in every of these, the tenth Synthetic Intelligence for Human-Robotic Interplay (AI-HRI) symposium was run as a hybrid in-person/on-line occasion, and we tuned in to the opening keynote, which was given by Patrícia Alves-Oliveira.

As a psychology pupil, Patrícia’s dream was to change into a therapist. Nonetheless, an internship, the place she encountered a robotic for the primary time, impressed her to vary her plans, and he or she determined to enter the sector of human-robot interplay. Following a PhD within the area, she labored as a postdoc, earlier than heading to trade as a designer within the Amazon Astro robotic crew.

Patrícia has labored on a variety of fascinating initiatives throughout her time in academia and in trade. Occupied with easy methods to design robots for particular person wants, and conserving the person on the forefront through the design course of, has been core to her work. She started by summarising three very completely different educational initiatives.

Creativity and robotics

The target of this venture was to design, fabricate, and consider robots as creativity-provoking instruments for youths. Patrícia created a social robotic named YOLO (or Your Personal Residing Object) that she designed to be child-proof (in different phrases, it may stand up to being dropped and knocked over), with the intention of making an attempt to assist youngsters discover their creativity throughout play. A machine studying algorithm learns the sample of play that the kid has and adapts the robotic behaviour accordingly. You possibly can see the robotic in motion within the demo under:

FLEXI robotic

As a postdoc venture, Patrícia labored on constructing FLEXI, a social robotic embodiment package. This package consists of a robotic (with a face, and a torso with a display screen on the entrance), which will be customised, and an open-source end-user programming interface designed to be user-friendly. The customisation ingredient implies that it may be used for a lot of purposes. The crew has deployed FLEXI throughout three software eventualities: community-support, psychological well being, and training, with the intention of assessing the pliability of the system. You possibly can see the robotic in motion, in numerous eventualities, right here.

Social eating

This venture centred on a robotic arm for folks with impaired mobility. Such techniques exist already for helping folks with duties equivalent to consuming. Nonetheless, in a social context they will typically kind a barrier between the person and the remainder of the group. The thought behind this venture was to contemplate how such a robotic might be tailored to work effectively in a social context, for instance, throughout a meal with household or mates. The crew interviewed folks with impaired mobility to evaluate their wants, and got here up with a set of design ideas for creating robot-assisted feeding techniques and an implementation information for future analysis on this space. You possibly can learn the analysis paper on this venture right here.

You will discover out extra about these three initiatives, and the opposite initiatives that Patrícia has been concerned in, right here.

Astro robotic

Patrícia has lengthy been excited by robots for the actual world, and the way this real-world expertise is aligned with the research of robots in academia and trade. She determined to depart academia and be part of the Astro robotic programme, which she felt was an important alternative to work on a large-scale real-world robotic venture.

The Astro robotic is a house robotic designed to help with duties equivalent to monitoring your home, delivering small objects throughout the house, recognising your pet, telling a narrative, or taking part in video games.

Patrícia took us by means of a typical day within the lifetime of a designer the place she all the time has in thoughts the larger image of what the crew is aiming for, in different phrases, what the best robotic, and its interactions with people, would appear like. Coupled to that, the method is ruled by core design tenets, such because the buyer wants, and non-negotiable core components that the robotic ought to embody. When contemplating a specific ingredient of the robotic design, for instance, the supply of an merchandise within the robotic tray, Patrícia makes use of storyboards to map out particulars of potential human-robot interactions. An necessary facet of design considerations edge circumstances, which happen often in the actual world. Good design will contemplate potential edge circumstances and incorporate methods to take care of them.

Patrícia closed by emphasising the significance of teamwork within the design course of, specifically, the necessity for interdisciplinary groups; by contemplating design from many alternative factors of view, the possibility of innovation is increased.

You will discover out extra in regards to the Synthetic Intelligence for Human-Robotic Interplay (AI-HRI) symposium right here.