Social Intelligence for a Task-Driven Assistive Robot

The objective of a socially assistive robot is to create a close and effective interaction with a human user for the purpose of giving assistance. In particular, the social interaction, guidance and support that a socially assistive robot can provide a person can be very beneficial to patient-centered care. However, there are a number of conundrums that must be addressed in designing such a robot. This work addresses one of the main limitations in the development of intelligent task-driven socially assistive robots: Robotic control architecture design and implementation with explicit social and assistive task functionalities. In particular, in this paper, a unique emotional behavior module is presented and implemented in a learning-based control architecture for human-robot interactions (HRI). The module is utilized to determine the appropriate emotions of the robot, as motivated by the well-being of the person, during assistive task-driven interactions. A novel online updating technique is used in order to allow the emotional model to adapt to new people and scenarios. Preliminary experiments presented show the effectiveness of utilizing robotic emotional assistive behavior during HRI in assistive scenarios.