关键词： Human-robot interaction   Robotics   Children with autism  

摘要： Robotics research in helping children with autism has gained increased attention in recent years. Children with autism often struggle with neurodevelopmental disorders that affect their lives particularly in communication skills, social interaction and their repetitive stereotyped behavior. In this article, we highlight previous findings on human-robot interaction for children with autism. To date, it has been claimed that child-robot interaction is a beneficial approach in helping children with autism to improve their quality of life. Based on an extensive search of the literature, we identified three major research gaps: (1) diversity in research focus, (2) bias contribution in robotics research towards specific behavior impairments in autism and, (3) effectiveness of human-robot interaction after robot-based intervention program. Therefore, this review paper shall identify and thoroughly discuss published works that address the research gaps found in this areas. This article is therefore seen as a crucial step in bridging the gap between robotics research and children with autism. The results presented could be beneficial for researchers in determining future directions for robotics research in helping children with autism.

摘要： Since the first reported radical resection by Miles in 1908, innovation in the field of rectal cancer surgery has continued at a steady pace. Improved preoperative staging, chemoradiation therapy for local advanced disease and pelvic MRI have drastically changed the course of disease for rectal cancer patients. Despite these important advances, surgical resection remains the cornerstone of treatment for rectal cancer. Surgical approaches to rectal cancer have also evolved to improve oncologic outcomes and reduced associated morbidity. Greater attention to pathologic assessment, total mesorectal excision, minimal invasive approaches, and minimizing the impact of sexual, bladder and bowel dysfunction have become the focus of modern-day rectal cancer surgeons. This chapter focuses on proctectomy for rectal cancer, current approaches and the high-level data to support their use. Published by Elsevier Inc.

关键词： Educational robotics   Primary school   Italian school   Computational thinking   Guideline   Learning path   Instructional design  

摘要： Nowadays, children and teenagers use technology products in an increasingly passive way. As simple consumers they cannot benefit from the opportunities of designing technology, which has a learning value. Educational Robotics (ER) programs are particularly effective in delivering contents of difficult disciplines: they can re-establish a balance between the learners and the technological devices, because the learners act as programmers and can develop their computational thinking. Therefore, we believe the school should upgrade its teaching methods, through the implementation of ER programs. This could be done without introducing a new subject, since technology could be considered like an interdisciplinary application module within pre-existing subjects. In this paper, we provide an overview of ER programs to share a practical guidance with those who want to plan educational workshops in their institutes. First, we analyze ER theoretical and epistemological fundamentals: ER has roots in recent and classic disciplines (psychology, cybernetics, robotics, cognitive science...), but it is also consistent with the principles of widely recognized pedagogies. Then, we describe successful Italian projects with a focus on regulations concerning ER programs. As a result of this analysis, we propose a brief guideline on the following topics: (a) needs analysis, (b) target segmentation, (c) objectives, (d) laboratory setting, (e) contents definition, (f) activities, (g) evaluation tools. Finally, we show that designing learning paths according to this method could also promote a more rigorous (and not only qualitative) evaluation, and then enhance both research and practice in this field.

关键词： Formal verification   Human modeling   Safety analysis   Human-robot collaboration  

摘要： Recent developments in manufacturing technologies, also known as Industry 4.0, seek to build Smart Factories where supply chains and production lines are equipped with a higher level of automation. However, this significant innovation does not entirely eliminate the need for the presence of human operators;on the contrary, it requires them to collaborate with robots and execute hybrid tasks. Thus, creating safe workspaces for human operators is crucial for the future of factories where humans and robots collaborate closely in common workspaces. The uncertainty of human behavior and, consequently, of the actual execution of workflows, pose significant challenges to the safety of collaborative applications. This paper extends our earlier work, a formal verification methodology to analyze the safety of collaborative robotics applications (Askarpour et al. 2017) [1], with a rich non-deterministic formal model of operator behaviors that captures the hazardous situations resulting from human errors. The model allows safety engineers to refine their designs until all plausible erroneous behaviors are considered and mitigated. The solidity of the proposed approach is evaluated on a pair of real-life case studies.

关键词： Artificial intelligence   character animation   collision avoidance   evolutionary computation   full-body motion   inverse kinematics   optimization   robotics  

摘要： In this paper, a novel and fast memetic evolutionary algorithm is presented which can solve fully constrained generic inverse kinematics with multiple end effectors and goal objectives, leaving high flexibility for the design of custom cost functions. The algorithm utilizes a hybridization of evolutionary and swarm optimization, combined with the limited-memory-Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno with bound constraints algorithm for gradient-based optimization. Accurate solutions can be found in real-time and suboptimal extrema are robustly avoided, scaling well even for greatly higher degree of freedom. The algorithm provides a general framework for hounded continuous optimization which only requires two parameters for the number of individuals and elites to be set, and supports adding additional goals and constraints for inverse kinematics, such as minimal displacement between solutions, collision avoidance, or functional joint relations. Experimental results on several industrial and anthropomorphic robots as well as on virtual characters demonstrate the algorithm to be applicable for solving complex kinematic postures for different challenging tasks in robotics, human-robot interaction and character animation, including dexterous object manipulation, collision-free full-body motion, as well as animation post-processing for video games and films. Implementations are made available for Unity3D and robot operating system.

关键词： Educational robotics   Inclusive education   Special needs   Socio-economic status   Cultural diversity   Gender differences  

摘要： It has been quite a long time since S. Papert introduced the idea that children should be involved in the use of computers in the learning process to support the development of computational thinking. Nowadays, educational robotics is introduced in different dimensions of education, but mostly it is used as part of a compulsory educational process in nonformal educational activities, in activities to reduce the risks of early school leaving, and in initiatives introduced by some projects where different aspects of educational robotics are tested in activities with students who have diverse special needs. But till now robotics has mostly been associated with the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and outcomes of educational robotics are measured through the prism of improved knowledge in STEM subjects. In this special issue, journal researchers provide results on ER in the context of inclusive education.

关键词： Unmeasurable angular velocity   Bounded disturbances   Subsystems   Adaptive robust finite-time control   Bioinspired neurodynamics method   Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional  

摘要： This paper addresses the adaptive robust finite-time bioinspired neurodynamics control (ARFBNC) for a class of mobile robots with unmeasurable angular velocity and multiple time-varying bounded disturbances. The error system of the mobile robot is decomposed into two subsystems based on the system model. The state feedback control laws with disturbance feed-forward compensators are designed for the two subsystems, respectively. The ARFBNC method is designed based on the state feedback control laws and two subsystems. The stability conditions in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are derived by introducing the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional. Unlike other works, both the unmeasurable angular velocity and multiple time-varying bounded disturbances are estimated effectively. The smooth bounded outputs are obtained and the sharp jumps of initial values for the state errors are reduced. By introducing the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, the closed-loop system is asymptotically stable and the state errors converge to an adjustable bounded region. Finally, three examples are given to show the effectiveness and advantage of the proposed methods.

关键词： Autonomy   AUV   lithium-ion   navigation   optical   swarm  

摘要： Reliable power supply, precise position determination and effective communication are the key requirements for strategic autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) involved in long duration scientific missions, search operations and when operated as a swarm. The paper presents the challenging range of AUV developed for deep water, Polar and intervention applications;demanding technical requirements for strategic AUV;reliability modeling done on the lithium-ion batteries to identify the redundancy requirements for achieving near-zero failures;navigation model to estimate the achievable level of position accuracies using the state-of-the-art navigation system;limitations in underwater communication;and their importance in realizing vehicle autonomy and swarm intelligence. It is identified that a strategic grade Doppler velocity- aided inertial navigation system could provide position accuracies of about 0.5% of the distance travelled when navigated using sea bottom or ice reference, and a 38 kWh lithium-ion battery pack requires about 7% redundant battery capacity to achieve a failure probability of < 1% in a period of 1 year.

关键词： Artificial intelligence   Education   Healthcare robots   Robot design   Robotics   Humanoid robots  

摘要： Purpose The following paper is a "Q&A interview" conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry PhD and innovator regarding her pioneering efforts and the challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The interviewee is Dr Maja Mataric, Chan Soon-Shiong Distinguished Professor in the Computer Science Department, Neuroscience Program, and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab and Vice Dean for Research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. In this interview, Mataric shares her personal and business perspectives on socially assistive robotics. Findings Mataric received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990 and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987. Inspired by the vast potential for affordable human-centered technologies, she went on to found and direct the Interaction Lab, initially at Brandeis University and then at the University of Southern California. Her lab works on developing human-robot non-physical interaction algorithms for supporting desirable behavior change;she has worked with a variety of beneficiary user populations, including children with autism, elderly with Alzheimer's, stroke survivors and teens at risk for Type 2 diabetes, among others. Originality/value Mataric is a pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics (SAR) with the goal of improving user health and wellness, communication, learning and autonomy. SAR uses interdisciplinary methods from computer science and engineering as well as cognitive science, social science and human studies evaluation, to endow robots with the ability