Browsing by Author "Park, Chung Hyuk"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Audio-based Emotion Estimation for Interactive Robotic Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
    Kim, Jonathan C.; Azzi, Paul; Jeon, Myounghoon; Howard, Ayanna M.; Park, Chung Hyuk (IEEE, 2017-01-01)
    Recently, efforts in the development of speech recognition systems and robots have come to fruition with an overflow of applications in our daily lives. However, we are still far from achieving natural interaction between humans and robots, given that robots do not take into account the emotional state of speakers. The objective of this research is to create an automatic emotion classifier integrated with a robot, such that the robot can understand the emotional state of a human user by analyzing the speech signals from the user. This becomes particularly relevant in the realm of using assistive robotics to tailor therapeutic techniques towards assisting children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Over the past two decades, the number of children being diagnosed with ASD has been rapidly increasing, yet the clinical and societal support have not been enough to cope with the needs. Therefore, finding alternative, affordable, and accessible means of therapy and assistance has become more of a concern. Improving audio-based emotion prediction for children with ASD will allow for the robotic system to properly assess the engagement level of the child and modify its responses to maximize the quality of interaction between the robot and the child and sustain an interactive learning environment.
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    Child-Robot Interaction in a Musical Dance Game: An Exploratory Comparison Study between Typically Developing Children and Children with Autism
    Barnes, Jaclyn A.; Park, Chung Hyuk; Howard, Ayanna; Jeon, Myounghoon (Taylor & Francis, 2021-02-07)
    Using robots in therapy for children on the autism spectrum is a promising avenue for child-robot interaction, and one that has garnered significant interest from the research community. After preliminary interviews with stakeholders and evaluating music selections, twelve typically developing (TD) children and three children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) participated in an experiment where they played the dance freeze game to four songs in partnership with either a NAO robot or a human partner. Overall, there were significant differences between TD children and children with ASD (e.g., mimicry, dance quality, & game play). There were mixed results for TD children, but they tended to show greater engagement with the researcher. However, objective results for children with ASD showed greater attention and engagement while dancing with the robot. There was little difference in game performance between partners or songs for either group. However, upbeat music did encourage greater movement than calm music. Using a robot in a musical dance game for children with ASD appears to show the advantages and potential just as in previous research efforts. Implications and future research are discussed with the results.
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    Dangerous HRI: Testing Real-World Robots has Real-World Consequences Workshop
    Robinette, Paul; Novitzky, Michael; Duncan, Brittany; Jeon, Myounghoon; Wagner, Alan; Park, Chung Hyuk (IEEE, 2019-01-01)
    Robotic rescuers digging through rubble, fire-fighting drones flying over populated areas, robotic servers pouring hot coffee for you, and a nursing robot checking your vitals are all examples of current or near-future situations where humans and robots are expected to interact in a dangerous situation. Dangerous HRI is an as-yet understudied area of the field. We define dangerous HRI as situations where humans experience some amount of risk of bodily harm while interacting with robots. This interaction could take many forms, such as a bystander (e.g. when an autonomous car waits at a crossing for a pedestrian), as a recipient of robotic assistance (rescue robots), or as a teammate (like an autonomous robot working with a SWAT team). To facilitate better study of this area, the Dangerous HRI workshop brings together researchers who perform experiments with some risk of bodily harm to participants and discuss strategies for mitigating this risk while still maintaining validity of the experiment. This workshop does not aim to tackle the general problem of human safety around robots, but instead focused on guidelines for and experience from experimenters.
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    Editorial: Contextualized Affective Interactions With Robots
    Jeon, Myounghoon; Park, Chung Hyuk; Kim, Yunkyung; Riener, Andreas; Mara, Martina (Frontiers, 2021-11-02)
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    Informal STEAM Education Case Study: Child-Robot Musical Theater
    Barnes, Jaclyn; FakhrHosseini, S. Maryam; Vasey, Eric; Park, Chung Hyuk; Jeon, Myounghoon (ACM, 2019)
    STEAM education fuses arts with traditional STEM fields so that the diverse disciplines can broaden and inform each other. Our eight-week STEAM afterschool program exposed elementary school children to social robotics and musical theater. Approximately 25 children grades K-5 participated over the course of the program with an average of 12 children attending each week. The program covered acting, dancing, music, and drawing with the robots in two-week modules based around the fairy tale, “Beauty and the Beast”. The modular design enabled children who could come to only a few sessions to participate actively. The children demonstrated enthusiasm for both the robots and the musical theater activities and were engaged in the program. Efforts such as this can provide meaningful opportunities for children to explore a variety of arts and STEM fields in an enjoyable manner. The program components and lessons learned are discussed with recommendations for future research.
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    Love at First Sight: Mere Exposure to Robot Appearance Leaves Impressions Similar to Interactions with Physical Robots
    Hosseini, S. Maryam Fakhr; Hilliger, Samantha; Barnes, Jaclyn; Jeon, Myounghoon; Park, Chung Hyuk; Howard, Ayanna M. (IEEE, 2017-01-01)
    As the technology needed to make robots robust and affordable draws ever nearer, human-robot interaction (HRI) research to make robots more useful and accessible to the general population becomes more crucial. In this study, 59 college students filled out an online survey soliciting their judgments regarding seven social robots based solely on appearance. Results suggest that participants prefer robots that resemble animals or humans over those that are intended to represent an imaginary creature or do not resemble a creature at all. Results are discussed based on social robot application and design features.
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    Musical Robots For Children With ASD Using A Client-Server Architecture
    Zhang, Ruimin; Barnes, Jaclyn; Ryan, Joseph; Jeon, Myounghoon; Park, Chung Hyuk; Howard, Ayanna M. (The International Community for Auditory Display, 2016-07)
    People with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions, which affects their social integration. Leveraging the recent advances in interactive robot and music therapy approaches, and integrating both, we have designed musical robots that can facilitate social and emotional interactions of children with ASD. Robots communicate with children with ASD while detecting their emotional states and physical activities and then, make real-time sonification based on the interaction data. Given that we envision the use of multiple robots with children, we have adopted a client-server architecture. Each robot and sensing device plays a role as a terminal, while the sonification server processes all the data and generates harmonized sonification. After describing our goals for the use of sonification, we detail the system architecture and on-going research scenarios. We believe that the present paper offers a new perspective on the sonification application for assistive technologies.
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    Robot-Assisted Socio-Emotional Intervention Framework for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
    Javed, Hifza; Jeon, Myounghoon; Howard, Ayanna; Park, Chung Hyuk (ACM, 2018-01-01)
    This paper presents a novel robot-assisted intervention framework designed to target sensory processing and emotion regulation difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder. Three types of systems are utilized to provide scalable robotic interactions with gesture-based and character-based socio-emotional expressions. The intervention framework includes (1) an emotional interaction and regulation game in mobile computing settings, (2) interactive robotic sessions with socio-emotional scenarios, and (3) gesture identification games to measure emotion processing and verbal skills in socio-emotional settings. This paper also presents preliminary results obtained from a pilot study conducted to evaluate the three interventions.
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    A Robotic Framework to Facilitate Sensory Experiences for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Preliminary Study
    Javed, Hifza; Burns, Rachael; Jeon, Myounghoon; Howard, Ayanna M.; Park, Chung Hyuk (ACM, 2020-01)
    The diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children is commonly accompanied by a diagnosis of sensory processing disorders. Abnormalities are usually reported in multiple sensory processing domains, showing a higher prevalence of unusual responses, particularly to tactile, auditory and visual stimuli. This paper discusses a novel robot-based framework designed to target sensory difficulties faced by children with ASD in a controlled setting. The setup consists of a number of sensory stations, together with two different robotic agents that navigate the stations and interact with the stimuli. These stimuli are designed to resemble real world scenarios that form a common part of one's everyday experiences. Given the strong interest of children with ASD in technology in general and robots in particular, we attempt to utilize our robotic platform to demonstrate socially acceptable responses to the stimuli in an interactive, pedagogical setting that encourages the child's social, motor and vocal skills, while providing a diverse sensory experience. A preliminary user study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed framework, with a total of 18 participants (5 with ASD and 13 typically developing) between the ages of 4 and 12 years. We derive a measure of social engagement, based on which we evaluate the effectiveness of the robots and sensory stations in order to identify key design features that can improve social engagement in children.
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    Robotic Motion Learning Framework to Promote Social Engagement
    Burns, Rachael; Jeon, Myounghoon; Park, Chung Hyuk (MDPI, 2018-02-05)
    Imitation is a powerful component of communication between people, and it poses an important implication in improving the quality of interaction in the field of human–robot interaction (HRI). This paper discusses a novel framework designed to improve human–robot interaction through robotic imitation of a participant’s gestures. In our experiment, a humanoid robotic agent socializes with and plays games with a participant. For the experimental group, the robot additionally imitates one of the participant’s novel gestures during a play session. We hypothesize that the robot’s use of imitation will increase the participant’s openness towards engaging with the robot. Experimental results from a user study of 12 subjects show that post-imitation, experimental subjects displayed a more positive emotional state, had higher instances of mood contagion towards the robot, and interpreted the robot to have a higher level of autonomy than their control group counterparts did. These results point to an increased participant interest in engagement fueled by personalized imitation during interaction.
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    Taking a Closer Look: Refining Trust and its Impact in HRI
    Dong, Jiayuan; Esterwood, Connor; Ye, Xin; Mitchell, Jennifer J.; Jo, Wonse; Robert, Lionel P.; Park, Chung Hyuk; Jeon, Myounghoon (ACM, 2024)
    As robots are rapidly integrated into our daily lives, enhancing trust between humans and robots is crucial to accepting robots and the effectiveness of human-robot interaction (HRI). This workshop aims to provide a platform for HRI researchers, practitioners, and students from diverse disciplines to engage in a discussion to define/refine the construct, understand different factors that influence trust in HRI and their impacts, and measure different aspects of trust. The workshop will contribute to building a solid research community on this crucial construct and guiding future research and development of better human-robot interaction.