Publication statistics
Pub. period:2008-2011
Pub. count:4
Number of co-authors:14
Co-authors
Number of publications with 3 favourite co-authors:
Kerstin Dautenhahn:4Patrizia Marti:2Elena Laudanna:1 Productive colleagues
Ben Robins's 3 most productive colleagues in number of publications:
Kerstin Dautenhahn:23Patrizia Marti:18Chrystopher L. Neh..:8
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Ben Robins
Publications by Ben Robins (bibliography)
Lehmann, Hagen, Iacono, Iolanda, Robins, Ben, Marti, Patrizia and Dautenhahn, Kerstin (2011): 'Make it move': playing cause and effect games with a robot companion for children with cognitive disabilities. In: Proceedings of the 2011 Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2011. pp. 105-112.
“Play is one of the most important activities in child development. Children with special needs are often excluded from play activities due to the nature of their impairments. This paper describes the use of two types of robots with very different configurations, one humanoid robot (KASPAR) and one mobile robotic platform (IROMEC), in a six month long-term study with children with different levels of cognitive and social disabilities. In this study we tested the effectiveness of KASPAR and IROMEC. IROMEC was designed for children with special needs in order to encourage them to be engaged in play activities. KASPAR was developed to facilitate social interaction, including applications designed to help children with autism. We examined whether these two robots can support the achievement of fundamental therapeutic and educational objectives for the cognitive and social development of these children. We performed similar play scenarios with both robots and monitored their effects on the behaviour of the children. In this paper we focus on the cause and effect game called Make it move. A preliminary analysis of the data shows very encouraging results. The interaction with the robots seemed to have in general positive influence on the development of the children's social skills. The level of success achieving the different objectives varied from child to child depending on the level and nature of their disability.”
© All rights reserved Lehmann et al. and/or their publisher
Robins, Ben, Ferrari, Ester, Dautenhahn, Kerstin, Kronreif, Gernot, Prazak-Aram, Barbara, Gelderblom, Gert-jan, Tanja, Bernd, Caprino, Francesca, Laudanna, Elena and Marti, Patrizia (2010): Human-centred design methods: Developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68 (12) pp. 873-898.
“This article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children's development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human-robot interactions.”
© All rights reserved Robins et al. and/or Academic Press
Robins, Ben, Dautenhahn, Kerstin and Dickerson, Paul (2009): From Isolation to Communication: A Case Study Evaluation of Robot Assisted Play for Children with Autism with a Minimally Expressive Humanoid Robot. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions 2009. pp. 205-211.
“The general context of the work presented in this paper is assistive robotics with our long-term aim to support children with autism. This paper is part of the Aurora project that studies ways in which robotic systems can encourage basic communication and social interaction skills in children with autism. This paper investigates how a small minimally expressive humanoid robot KASPAR can assume the role of a social mediator -- encouraging children with low functioning autism to interact with the robot, to break their isolation and importantly, to facilitate interaction with other people. The article provides a case study evaluation of segments of trials where three children with autism, who usually do not interact with other people in their day to day activity, interacted with the robot and with co-present adults. A preliminary observational analysis was undertaken which applied, in abbreviated form, certain principles from conversation analysis -- notably attention to the context in which the target behaviour occurred. The analysis was conducted by a social psychologist with expertise in using conversation analysis to understand interactions involving persons with an ASD. The analysis emphasises aspects of embodiment and interaction kinesics and revealed unexpected competencies on the part of the children. It showed how the robot served as a salient object mediating and encouraging interaction between the children and co-present adults.”
© All rights reserved Robins et al. and/or IEEE
Robins, Ben, Dautenhahn, Kerstin, Boekhorst, Rene te and Nehaniv, Chrystopher L. (2008): Behaviour delay and robot expressiveness in child-robot interactions: a user study on interaction kinesics. In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 2008. pp. 17-24.
“This paper presents results of a novel study on interaction kinesics where 18 children interacted with a humanoid child-sized robot called KASPAR. Based on findings in psychology and social sciences we propose the temporal behaviour matching hypothesis which predicts that children will adapt to and match the robot's temporal behaviour. Each child took part in six experimental trials involving two games in which the dynamics of interactions played a key part: a body expression imitation game, where the robot imitated expressions demonstrated by the children, and a drumming game where the robot mirrored the children's drumming. In both games KASPAR responded either with or without a delay. Additionally, in the drumming game, KASPAR responded with or without exhibiting facial/gestural expressions. Individual case studies as well as statistical analysis of the complete sample are presented. Results show that a delay of the robot's drumming response lead to larger pauses (with and without robot nonverbal gestural expressions) and longer drumming durations (with nonverbal gestural expressions only). In the imitation game, the robot's delay lead to longer imitation eliciting behaviour with longer pauses for the children, but systematic individual differences are observed in regards to the effects on the children's pauses. Results are generally consistent with the temporal behaviour matching hypothesis, i.e. children adapted the timing of their behaviour, e.g. by mirroring to the robot's temporal behaviour.”
© All rights reserved Robins et al. and/or ACM Press
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