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Implicit Aspects of the Psychosocial Rehabilitation with a Humanoid Robot

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Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, Workshops - 13th International Conference (MIS4TEL 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 769))

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Abstract

The paper presents an approach to understanding the emergent dynamics of human-robot interaction in the specific case of a humanoid robot taking the role of a co-therapist to the human therapist in psychosocial rehabilitation by focusing on the nonverbal communication in these sessions. The intention is to eliminate the negative effects of reactance to the robot by employing the SociBot platform, which has been designed with enhanced facial features. An empirical study is performed to investigate implicit aspects of perceiving faces of different modality. The results show that viewers assess differently the positive and negative features, which could be attributed to the presented faces – human, android or robotic (machine-looking). At the same time, no effect of type of face on the feature assessment process was observed. Some implications for using robots as co-therapists are briefly discussed as an emerging interactive technology in support of people with special needs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt.

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Acknowledgement

The authors express their gratitude to actress Mrs. Violina Vasileva-Alexandrova for participating in the video as the human agent, and Ms. Gagandeep Kaur for her help in the design of the stimulus. The research, leading to these results, has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 730994 (TERRINet), the Research Fund of Bulgaria for projects №. KP-06-H42/4 (2020-2023), No. KP-06-ПH57/28 (2021–2024) and OP Science and Education for Smart Growth (2014–2020) for project Competence Center “Intelligent mechatronic, eco- and energy saving systems and technologies” BG05M2OP001-1.002-0023.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Robotics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Maya Dimitrova

  2. Bristol Robotics Lab, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS34 8QZ, UK

    Virginia Ruiz Garate, Dan Withey & Chris Harper

  3. Mondragon Unibertsitatea, 48014, Bilbao, Spain

    Virginia Ruiz Garate

Authors
  1. Maya Dimitrova
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  2. Virginia Ruiz Garate
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  3. Dan Withey
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  4. Chris Harper
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maya Dimitrova .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Zuzana Kubincová

  2. University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy

    Federica Caruso

  3. Universitetet i Tromsø (UiT) – Norges arktiske universitet, Tromsø, Norway

    Tae-eun Kim

  4. Technical University of Sofia , Sofia, Bulgaria

    Malinka Ivanova

  5. Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L'Aquila, Coppito, Italy

    Loreto Lancia

  6. Department of Computer Science, University of Salerno, FISCIANO, Salerno, Italy

    Maria Angela Pellegrino

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Dimitrova, M., Garate, V.R., Withey, D., Harper, C. (2023). Implicit Aspects of the Psychosocial Rehabilitation with a Humanoid Robot. In: Kubincová, Z., Caruso, F., Kim, Te., Ivanova, M., Lancia, L., Pellegrino, M.A. (eds) Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, Workshops - 13th International Conference. MIS4TEL 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 769. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42134-1_12

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