Sharif Digital Repository

Treatment of cancer involves many invasive procedures that could be a source of distress in kids suffering from cancer. Distress itself can be an important obstacle in patients' acceptance of treatment and their adaptation to it, consequently reducing its efficiency. Distress symptoms, in a spectrum from mild to critical, are shown to be widespread in children struggling with cancer. In recent years to alleviate this psychological condition, researchers have proposed and examined several methods such as relaxation, hypnosis, desensitization, and distraction. This study presents a new approach to explore the impact of utilizing a humanoid robot as a therapy-assistant in dealing with patients'... 

Treating cancer encompasses many invasive procedures that can be a source of distress in oncology patients. Distress itself can be a major obstruction in the path of acceptance of treatment and the patient's adaptation to it, thereby reducing its efficiency. These distress symptoms have been found to be prevalent in children suffering from cancer, in a spectrum from mild to critical. In the past years in response to this psychological suffering, researchers have proposed and tested several methods such as relaxation, hypnosis, desensitization, and distraction. This paper propounds a new approach by exploring the effect of utilizing a humanoid robot as a therapy-assistive tool in dealing with... 

Music-based therapy is an appropriate tool to facilitate multisystem development in children with autism. The focus of this study is to implement a systematic and hierarchical music-based scenario in order to teach the fundamentals of music to children with autism through a social robot. To this end, we have programmed a NAO robot to play the xylophone and the drum. After running our designed robot-assisted clinical interventions on three high-functioning and one low functioning autistic children, fairly promising results have been observed. We indicated that the high-functioning participants have learned how to play the musical notes, short sentences, and simple rhythms. Moreover, the... 

This paper presents the design performance characteristics of a novel Robotic Mannequin, “RoMa”, developed for the fashion industry. RoMa, a full-body humanoid social robot platform, is currently in the final stages of development for visual merchandising to promote customer appeal. RoMa is characterized by nine features which are listed as: appealing appearance, avoiding the uncanny valley, easy maintenance, interactive, light weight, low developmental cost, suitable body movements, suitable color, and user friendly. In this paper, important design procedures and considerations are briefly presented and discussed. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG  

This article endeavors to present the impact of conducting robot-assisted music-based intervention sessions for children with low-functioning (LF) autism. To this end, a drum/xylophone playing robot is used to teach basic concepts of how to play the instruments to four participants with LF autism during nine educational sessions. The main findings of this study are compared to similar studies conducted with children with high-functioning autism. Our main findings indicated that the stereotyped behaviors of all the subjects decreased during the course of the program with an approximate large Cohen’s d effect size. Moreover, the children showed some improvement in imitation, joint attention,... 

No-one likes being confined to a hospital bed. Children particularly can feel lonely, bored or frightened in these conditions. Hours feel like days, and they may not be able to fully comprehend why they are there. Among kids hospitalized because of distinct diseases, children with cancer have incomparable status and needs. They experience physical and mental problems caused by cancer and medications. Cancer treatment may cause distress which can lessen the effectiveness of the treatment. Utilizing social robots to interact with children in clinical environments has been verified to both diminish their distress level and enhance the effectiveness of the treatment process. To improve the... 

This paper presents the design process and construction of a mobile social robot companion "Arash" for educational and therapeutic intervention for children with chronic diseases; one which is based on their interests and needs. This study concentrates on children with cancer who suffer from physical pain caused by both the disease and its treatment. Moreover, cancer treatment causes emotional distress, which can reduce the efficiency of medications. Using social robots to interact with ill children in a hospital environment could decrease their distress, thereby improving the efficiency of the treatment. Arash is a 15 degrees-of-freedom cost effective humanoid mobile robot companion,... 

Robotic blimps have a wide range of applications, such as monitoring activities in their surroundings, advertising, and performing on stages. They also have remarkable capacities to be used as a social robot. In this research, a manually operated social robotic blimp has been developed intending to interact with children as a social agent and attract adults’ attention as an entertainer in indoor public environments. Since the appearance of a social robot has a significant impact on its acceptance, first, we acquired opinions of several participants on the shape of a desired floating robot. The results revealed that a simple spherical structure adequately draws people’s attention. After... 

This study aims at examining the effect of Robot Assisted language learning (RALL) on the anxiety level and attitude in the English language learning classroom. Forty-six female students who were beginners at the age of 12 participated in this study and were randomly assigned into two groups of RALL (30 students) and non-RALL (16 students). The treatment was given by a teacher accompanied by a humanoid robot assistant for the RALL group. Two questionnaires of anxiety [15] and attitude [19] were utilized to measure the students' anxiety and attitude. The results of descriptive and t-tests indicated that there was lower anxiety and positive attitude towards English learning in the RALL group... 

This study aimed to examine the effect of robot assisted language learning (RALL) on the anxiety level and attitude in English vocabulary acquisition amongst Iranian EFL junior high school students. Forty-six female students, who were beginners at the age of 12, participated in this study and were randomly assigned into two groups of RALL (30 students) and non-RALL (16 students). The textbook, the materials, as well as the teacher were the same in the two groups. However in the RALL group, the treatment was given by a teacher accompanied by a humanoid robot assistant. Two questionnaires of anxiety and attitude were utilized to measure the students’ anxiety and attitude (Horwitz et al. 1986;...