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Creating MyJay: A New Design for Robot-Assisted Play for Children with Physical Special Needs

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 12483))

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Abstract

Robots present an opportunity to redefine traditional game scenarios by being physical embodiments of agents/game elements. Robot assisted play has been used to reduce the barriers that children with physical special needs experience. However, many studies focus on child-robot interaction rather than child-child interaction. In an attempt to address this gap, a semi-autonomous, mobile robot MyJay was created. This open-source robot features light and color for communicative feedback, omni-directional mobility, robust mechanisms, adjustable levels of autonomy for dynamic interaction, and a child-friendly aesthetically-pleasing outer shell. This paper outlines the development process of MyJay and discusses its role in future HRI studies through the creation of a competitive or collaborative, multi-player game.

This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada 150 Research Chairs Program and thanks to Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab (SIRRL), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

    Hamza Mahdi, Shahed Saleh, Omar Shariff & Kerstin Dautenhahn

Authors
  1. Hamza Mahdi
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  2. Shahed Saleh
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  3. Omar Shariff
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  4. Kerstin Dautenhahn
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hamza Mahdi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Alan R. Wagner

  2. University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, USA

    David Feil-Seifer

  3. University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

    Kerstin S. Haring

  4. University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Silvia Rossi

  5. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA

    Thomas Williams

  6. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  7. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

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Mahdi, H., Saleh, S., Shariff, O., Dautenhahn, K. (2020). Creating MyJay: A New Design for Robot-Assisted Play for Children with Physical Special Needs. In: Wagner, A.R., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12483. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62056-1_56

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62056-1_56

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62055-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62056-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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