Page 187 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

170 Socially Intelligent Agents

3.1 A toy and educational tool

An important motivation behind the creation of the first Robota doll was to
make it an appealing show-case of Artificial Intelligence techniques. This wish
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is now realized thanks to the museum La cité des sciences et de l’industrie ,
which will be presenting it from November 2001 to March 2003.
I also wished to create a cute, but interesting toy robot. In order to achieve
this, I provided the robot with multimedia type of interactions. In spring 1998,
tests with children of 5 and 6 years old showed the potential of the system as
a game for children [3]. The children showed pleasure when the robot reacted
to their movements. The robot would respond to the children touching specific
parts of its body, by making small movements or little noises. It would mimic
the child’s head and arm movements. Because imitation is a game that young
children like to play with each other and their parents, it was easy for them
to understand that they could interact with the robot in this way. The children
managed to teach the robot some words part of their every-day vocabulary (e.g.
food, hello, no) and showed satisfaction when the robot would speak the words
back.
Another important wish was that the robot would be useful. In this spirit,
I have sought collaboration with educators and clinicians. One key feature of
the robot as an educational tool is that the level of complexity of the game with
Robota can be varied. One can restrict oneself to only interact with the built-in
behaviors of the robot (a baby-like robot). The learning game can be restricted
to learning only music patterns (using the musical keyboard), dance patterns,
or speech.
This lead to the idea of using the game with Robota (by exploiting the dif-
ferent degrees of complexity) to train and possibly test (in the case of retarded
children and, e.g., for evaluating the deepness of autism) the child’s motor
and linguistic competences. In October 1999, as part of Kerstin Dautenhahn’s
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Aurora project , the first prototype of Robota was tested at Radlett Lodge
School with a group of children with autism. Although the interactions were
not formally documented, observations showed that the children showed great
interest in the robot. Consistent with general assumptions about autism, they
showed interest in details of the robot (e.g. eyes, cables that were visible etc.).
In collaboration with Kerstin Dautenhahn, further tests will be carried out to
evaluate the possible use of the robot in her projects.
Current collaboration with Sharon Demuth, clinician, and Yvette Pena, di-
rector of the USC premature infant clinic (Los Angeles) conducts pilot studies
to evaluate the use of the robot with premature children. The idea there is that
robot would serve as an incentive for the child to perform its daily necessary
exercises, in order to overcome its motor weaknesses, as well as its verbal
delay.