Abstract
We present a prototype whereby we enabled a humanoid robot to be used to assist mental health patients and their families. Our approach removes the need for Cloud-based automatic speech recognition systems to address healthcare privacy expectations. Furthermore, we describe how the robot could be used in a mental health facility by giving directions from patient selection to metrics for evaluation. Our overarching goal is to make the robot interaction as natural as possible to the point where the robot can develop artificial empathy for the human companion through the interpretation of vocals and facial expressions to infer emotions.
E. Pérez Valle worked on this project while at Ontario Tech, supported by a MITACS Globalink Research Internship.
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Vargas Martin, M., Pérez Valle, E., Horsburgh, S. (2021). Artificial Empathy for Clinical Companion Robots with Privacy-By-Design. In: Ye, J., O'Grady, M.J., Civitarese, G., Yordanova, K. (eds) Wireless Mobile Communication and Healthcare. MobiHealth 2020. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 362. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70569-5_23
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