Which Robot Behavior Can Motivate Children to Tidy up Their Toys? Design and Evaluation of "Ranger"

We present the design approach and evaluation of our proto- type called “Ranger”. Ranger is a robotic toy box that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their room. We evalu- ated Ranger in 14 families with 31 children (2-10 years) using the Wizard-of-Oz technique. This case study explores two different robot behaviors (proactive vs. reactive) and their impact on children’s interaction with the robot and the tidy- ing behavior. The analysis of the video recorded scenarios shows that the proactive robot tended to encourage more playful and explorative behavior in children, whereas the reactive robot triggered more tidying behavior. Our find- ings hold implications for the design of interactive robots for children, and may also serve as an example of evaluating an early version of a prototype in a real-world setting.

Motivating Children to Tidy up their Toys with a Robotic Box

Alain Berthoud, Pierre Dillenbourg, Julia Fink, Francesco Mondada, Philippe Rétornaz, Florian Christopher Vaussard

The poster presents the evaluation of our prototype, called “Ranger”, which is a robotic box that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their room. The robot was tested in 14 families with 31 children (2-10 years) using the Wizard-of-Oz technique. We found that the way in which children interacted with the robotic box was impacted by how active it behaved. Significantly more toys were put in the box in the passive robot condition compared to children’s more playful and explorative behavior in the active robot condition. Our results hold important implications for the design of interactive robots for children.

2013

Dynamics of Human-Robot Interaction in Domestic Environments

Julia Fink

Domestic service robots are nowadays widely available on the consumer market. As such, robots have begun entering people’s homes and daily lives. However, it seems that the dissemination of domestic robots has not happened as easily and widespread as it was anticipated in the first place. Little is known about the reasons why because long-term studies of ordinary people using real robots in their homes are rare. To better understand how people interact, use and accept domestic robots, studies of human-robot interaction require ecologically valid settings and the user and their needs have to come into the focus. In this dissertation, we propose to investigate the dynamics of human-robot interaction in domestic environments. We first explore the field by means of a 6-month ethnographic study of nine households. We provided each of the households with a Roomba vacuum cleaning robot. Our motivation is to understand long-term acceptance and to identify factors that can promote and hinder the integration of a domestic service robot in different types of households. We would like to find out how people’s perception of the robot, and the way they interact with it and use it, evolve over time. Furthermore, as social factors were highlighted in previous studies on technology adoption in homes, we shed light on to what extent people view Roomba and other types of domestic robots as a social entity and to what extent they anthropomorphize it. Findings of this research can be used to guide the design of user-oriented robots that have the potential to lastingly become a valuable part within the home ecology. Then, we pursue the idea of developing our own domestic robot prototype that could be used in a household with children. We imagine a playful robot that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their toys. In a first evaluation of the robot in 14 family homes, we study the effect of a proactive and reactive robot behavior on children’s interaction with the robot and their motivation to tidy up. A follow-up experiment explores the possibility to sustain children’s engagement by manipulating the robot’s behavior in such way that it appears unexpected. We further investigate how far this influences children’s perception of the robot in terms of anthropomorphism. Our findings emphasize the importance of research in ecologically valid settings in order to obtain a better understanding of human-robot interaction, advance further the design of user-oriented robots and foster the long-term acceptance of these devices.

EPFL2014

Enabling Collective Operation of Indoor Flying Robots

James Roberts

Collective flying robots show great potential in many diverse indoor applications. Their added robustness, parallel operation and redundancy has clear advantages over a single flying robot. However, flying within cluttered and unprepared indoor environments, even for a single flying robot, is extremely challenging. The main reason why collective flying robots have not yet been successful within indoor environments, is due to a combination of several challenges related to the size constraints placed on an indoor hovering platform, which directly limits the available energy, embedded sensing and processing capabilities of a flying robot. The energetic cost of flying, places limits on the flight endurance and practicality of a swarm of flying robots. The current spatial-coordination approaches implement methods that are either too computationally expensive, or impractical for real-world operation, within unknown and unprepared indoor environments. The goal of this thesis was to develop a practical methodology for enabling energy efficient, autonomous indoor flying robots capable of inter-robot spatial-coordination for unprepared indoor environments, without using external aids. In order to enable collective operation of indoor flying robots, several practical methodologies have been proposed and demonstrated. A generalised design strategy has been proposed to dimension a hovering platform for a specific flight endurance, payload capability and robustness criteria. The developed method can be used as a practical design tool for anyone working with hovering platforms. The dimensioning strategy has created a design, which is highly suitable for carrying the necessary sensing and processing required to enable the collective operation of indoor flying robots. A simple sensing and control strategy is proposed for enabling anti-drift control and obstacle avoidance behaviours on an indoor highly dynamic, hovering platform. The approach has enabled one of the first indoor hovering platforms that could achieve such a capability without using any external aids. For the collective operation of indoor flying robots to work in reality, the on-board energy needs to be managed efficiently and conserved in a way that allows a swarm of robots to be useful, extending beyond the individual 10-20 min flight time. A generalised energy model has been developed, allowing for the accurate estimation of the flight endurance and perching time of hovering platforms. The energy model can be used to optimise the battery selection process of a hovering platform, to obtain the highest possible endurance. This is the only model known that is able to predict any combination of flying endurance and perching times. Additionally, a method of attaching to the ceiling has been presented that allows a flying robot to conserve energy and have a stable birds-eye-view while performing static sensing tasks. By applying energy management techniques, through use of energy modelling and behaviours that reduce the flight time, the energetic cost of flying can be mitigated and the mission endurance can be extended over several hours, which is especially useful for collective operation. A new infrared ranging technique has been developed that allows for a high sensing performance, including long range (12 m), high-speed (1 kHz / # robots) and high resolution (better than 1.1 cm up to 6 m). A practical on-board sensing method using this technique, has been developed that can provide spatial-coordination between multiple robots in three dimensions. The developed approach allows for easily adaptation, to suit other robots and applications, depending on a specific sensing speed and coverage requirement. The developed sensor is the worlds first embedded 3-D relative positioning sensor that has the ability to enable inter-robot spatial-coordination in three dimensions, which is necessary for achieving goal-directed flight on highly dynamic flying robots. A practical autonomous flight control methodology has been demonstrated that can provide hovering platform stabilisation, 3-D obstacle avoidance and 3-D waypoint navigation, all using the 3-D relative positioning sensor. Goal-directed flight and collective deployment have been achieved using only the information from the 3-D relative positioning sensing. The developed methodologies within this thesis, has enabled for the first time, the collective operation of highly dynamic indoor flying robots, without using external aids.