ABSTRACT
The nexus of advances in robotics, NLU, and machine learning has created opportunities for personalized robots for the ultimate robotics frontier: the home. The current pandemic has both caused and exposed unprecedented levels of health & wellness, education, and training needs worldwide, which must increasingly be addressed in the home. Socially assistive robotics has the potential to address those needs through personalized and affordable in-home support. This talk will discuss human-robot interaction methods for socially assistive robotics that utilize multi-modal interaction data and expressive and persuasive robot behavior to monitor, coach, and motivate users to engage in health, wellness, education and training activities. Methods and results will be presented that include modeling, learning, and personalizing user motivation, engagement, and coaching of healthy children and adults, stroke patients, Alzheimer’s patients, and children with autism spectrum disorders, in short and long-term (month+) deployments in schools, therapy centers, and homes. Research and commercial implications and pathways will be discussed.