October 25, 2016
Introducing EMAR the Ecological Momentary Assessment Robot
Introducing EMAR
We want to gather longitudinal data on stress in teens in order to better understand the experience of stress and to begin to build a profile of what stress looks like for teens. We want to gather this data on-site, in a high school from as many teens as possible and the only way to do this is a robot.
We are building EMAR – the Ecological Momentary Assessment Robot – an engaging social robot that lives in a high school and is perceived as a peer to students. EMAR gathers stress and mood data from teens throughout their school day and shares that data in aggregate with the school community. This is how we get a pulse on the teen community at school to better understand how students are feeling. Why a robot you ask?
Robots…
Are Engaging– A way to learn about teens in an authentic, engaging way. Data collection is not burdensome or boring
Are Social– Research shows robots often enhance and increase human-human social interaction [1, 2, 3].
Increase Compliance– Initial research with undergrads shows that students were more likely to do what a physical robot asked than a computer or a robot on a screen [4].
Are Innovative– It’s never been done. Teens are an underexplored population in robot design (human-robot interaction).
References
[1] Wada, K., Shibata, T., Saito, T., Sakamoto, K., & Tanie, K. (2005, April). Psychological and social effects of one year robot assisted activity on elderly people at a health service facility for the aged. In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (pp. 2785-2790). IEEE.
[2] Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., Te Boekhorst, R., & Billard, A. (2005). Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children with autism: can a small humanoid robot help encourage social interaction skills?. Universal Access in the Information Society, 4(2), 105-120.
[3] Kim, E. S., Berkovits, L. D., Bernier, E. P., Leyzberg, D., Shic, F., Paul, R., & Scassellati, B. (2013). Social robots as embedded reinforcers of social behavior in children with autism. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 43(5), 1038-1049.
[4] Bainbridge, W. A., Hart, J. W., Kim, E. S., & Scassellati, B. (2011). The benefits of interactions with physically present robots over video-displayed agents. International Journal of Social Robotics, 3(1), 41-52.
