AsiRo-μ: A Multi-purpose Robotic Assistant for Educational Inclusion of Children with Multiple Disabilities

Jonnathan Andrade-Altamirano, Ana Parra-Astudillo, Vladimir Robles-Bykbaev, Nidia Almeida-Solíz, Sofía Bravo-Buri, Efren Lema-Condo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Nowadays, artificial intelligence is a tool widely used in several areas such as medicine, personal assistance, regular/special education, leisure, among many others. Additive manufacturing development allows designing and making innovative low-cost robotic assistants for educational inclusion processes in developing countries. There are not enough assistive technologies for special education centers in Ecuador due to the lack of resources. For these reasons, in this paper, we describe the robot AsiRo-μ (multi-purpose robotic assistant, for its Spanish name). AsiRo-μ is based on the open-source 3D printed robot Inmmov. It implements the following functionalities: hand gestures recognition, automatic speech recognition and text to speech function through the IBM Watson Cloud services, and gesture imitation. The robot aims to conduct a dialogue with the children, motivate them to carry out the exercises/rehabilitation activities, and motivate and engage them in the therapy sessions (for children with disabilities). To determine the children’s acceptance level, we carried out a pilot experiment with two groups of children. The first group consisted of 7 children with multiple disabilities (intellectual disability, Joubert syndrome, Down Syndrome, Autism, etc.), whereas in the second participated 30 children aged between 4 and 6 years (without disabilities). Each child interacted with the robot, and a group of experts evaluated the children’s perceptions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Artificial Intelligence, Software and Systems Engineering - Proceedings of the AHFE 2021 Virtual Conferences on Human Factors in Software and Systems Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Social Computing, and Energy, 2021
EditorsTareq Z. Ahram, Waldemar Karwowski, Jay Kalra
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages199-206
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9783030806231
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
EventAHFE Conferences on Human Factors in Software and Systems Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Social Computing, and Energy, 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 25 Jul 202129 Jul 2021

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Networks and Systems
Volume271
ISSN (Print)2367-3370
ISSN (Electronic)2367-3389

Conference

ConferenceAHFE Conferences on Human Factors in Software and Systems Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Social Computing, and Energy, 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period25/07/2129/07/21

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Keywords

  • Computer Vision
  • Equalization
  • Image processing
  • Microcontroller
  • Robotic assistant
  • Segmentation

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