Browsing by Author "Liu, Honghai"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    How to Build a Supervised Autonomous System for Robot-Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
    (De Gruyter, 2017-05-11) Esteban, P. G.; Baxter, Paul; Belpaeme, Tony; Billing, Erik; Cai, Haibin; Cao, Hoang-Long; Coeckelbergh, Mark; Costescu, Cristina; David, Daniel; De Beir, Albert; Fang, Yingfeng; Ju, Zhaojie; Kennedy, James; Liu, Honghai; Mazel, Alexandre; Pandey, Amit; Richardson, Kathleen; Senft, Emmanuel; Thill, Serge; Van de Perre, Greet; Vanderborght, Bram; Vernon, David; Yu, Hui; Ziemke, Tom
    Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through remote control of the robot in so-called Wizard of Oz (WoZ) paradigms.However, there is a need to increase the autonomy of the robot both to lighten the burden on human therapists (who have to remain in control and, importantly, supervise the robot) and to provide a consistent therapeutic experience. This paper seeks to provide insight into increasing the autonomy level of social robots in therapy to move beyond WoZ. With the final aim of improved human-human social interaction for the children, this multidisciplinary research seeks to facilitate the use of social robots as tools in clinical situations by addressing the challenge of increasing robot autonomy.We introduce the clinical framework in which the developments are tested, alongside initial data obtained from patients in a first phase of the project using a WoZ set-up mimicking the targeted supervised-autonomy behaviour. We further describe the implemented system architecture capable of providing the robot with supervised autonomy.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Robot-enhanced therapy: development and validation of supervised autonomous robotic system for autism spectrum disorders therapy
    (IEEE, 2019-04-09) Richardson, Kathleen; Cao, H.; Esteban, P.G.; Bartlett, M.; Belpaeme, T.; Billing, E.; Cai, H.; Coeckelbergh, Mark; Costescu, C.; David, D.; Beir, A.D.; Hermandez, D.; Kennedy, J.; Liu, Honghai; Matu, S.; Mazel, A.; Pandey, A.; Senft, E.; Thill, S.; de Perre, G.V.; Vanderborght, B.; Vernon, D.; Wakanuma, K.; Yu, H.; Zhou, X.; Ziemke, T.
    R obot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has shown po- tential advantages to improve social skills for children with Autism Spectrum Disor- ders (ASD). This paper overviews the technology development and clinical results of the EC-FP7 funded DREAM project that aims to develop the next level of RAT in both clinical and technologi- cal perspectives – which we term Robot-Enhanced Therapy (RET). Within the project, a supervised autonomous robotic system is collaboratively de- veloped by an interdisciplinary consortium, includ- ing psychotherapists, cognitive scientists, roboti- cists, computer scientists and ethicists, allowing the robot control to go beyond the classical remote control methods (Wizard of Oz – WoZ) while ensur- ing safe and ethical robot behavior. Rigorous clin- ical studies are conducted to validate the efficacy of RET. Current results indicate that RET can ob- tain equivalent performance compared to human standard therapy for children with ASD. We also discuss the next steps of developing RET robotic systems.