About
Children experience pain and distress in clinical settings every day, and the negative consequences of unaddressed pain can be both short-term (e.g. fear, distress, inability to perform procedures) and long-term (e.g. needle phobia, anxiety). In a series of small, innovative studies by project team members, a Nao humanoid robot has been used to deliver cognitive- behavioural therapy-based interventions during needle-based procedures. The results of these early studies have been positive, showing high acceptance among the target population as well as promising initial clinical results. However, these studies were all hindered by a critical technical limitation: in all cases, the robot was remotely operated and employed purely scripted behaviour with limited AI support, diminishing the flexibility and robustness of its behaviour as well as its potential to offer personalised, adaptive procedural support to children. In this project, we aim to address this limitation by developing and evaluating a clinically relevant and responsive AI-enhanced social robot. We believe that interaction with a robust, adaptive, socially intelligent robot can effectively distract children during painful clinical procedures, thereby reducing pain and distress. This project is a Canada-UK collaboration, involving two partners from the UK (University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University) and five partners from Canada (University of Alberta, University of Toronto, McMaster University, Ryerson University, Dalhousie University).
The work is interdisciplinary: technical software development will take place in the UK, while co- design and usability studies and clinical research will be done in Canada. We also have an in- kind contribution from the Canadian knowledge transfer organisation Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP), which will use its resources to disseminate the project results to stakeholders across Canada.
Publications
Foster ME, Ali S, Litwin S, Parker J, Petrick R, Smith D, Stinson J, Zeller F. (2020). Using AI- Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences. 10.1007/978-3-030-62056-1_45.
Proceedings
Zeller, F., Foster, M.E., Ali, S., Petrick, R.P., Smith, D.H. (2021). Ethical Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Robots in Childrens’ Healthcare Experiences. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2021), March 3.
Foster, M. E., Ali, S., Litwin, S., Parker, J., Petrick, R. P., Smith, D. H., … & Zeller, F. (2020, November). Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences. In International Conference on Social Robotics (pp. 542-553). Springer, Cham.
Presentations
Zeller, F., Foster, M.E., Ali, S., Petrick, R.P., Smith, D.H. (2021). Ethical Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Robots in Childrens’ Healthcare Experiences. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2021), March 3.
This work is funded by the ESRC/SSHRC Canada-UK Artificial Intelligence Initiative through grant ES/T012986/1.
Latest from this project
Springer Link ➚
Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences
AI Healthcare Social Robots