Sharif Digital Repository

Local educational institutions produce in-house English for Specific Purpose (ESP) materials according to the curriculum policies designated and developed by the Ministry of Higher Education In Iran. To this end, this book aims to be used in the Iranian setting at the tertiary level for undergraduate students majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Moreover, the style of English usage in this ESP textbook is American.
Regarding the content of the textbook, it has both thematic organizations in which the topics are relevant and includes sufficient treatment of the target language areas necessary for the students. The principle organizing approach of this textbook is theme-based. In addition,... 

Accurate estimation of the in-plane shear modulus of solids reinforced by nano-/micro-size elliptical multi-coated fibers is the focus of this paper. It is well-known that at the scales comparable to the nanoscopic length scales of the material, traditional theory of elasticity ceases to hold and, moreover, due to lack of consideration of such length scales has an innate weakness of sensing the size effect. Therefore, it is proposed to formulate and calculate the effective shear modulus of the nano-/micro-composite within micropolar theory which introduces two material characteristic lengths into the field equations. For this purpose, Mori-Tanaka theory is extended to treat nested... 

Nanoscopic elastic behavior of the field quantities in the vicinities of nanosize defects and nano-inhomogeneities cannot be properly described within the size independent classical theory. As a remedy to this type of dilemmas and enhancement of the accuracy of the solution, polar or gradient continuum theories may be utilized. The current work is concerned with composites consisting of micropolar matrix and micropolar ellipsoidal particles with periodic distribution throughout the three dimensional space. In particular, the analytical determinations of the effective micropolar elastic moduli tensor, effective micropolar couple stress moduli tensor, and effective micropolar characteristic... 

Nanoscopic elastic behavior of the field quantities in the vicinities of nanosize defects and nano-inhomogeneities cannot be properly described within the size independent classical theory. As a remedy to this type of dilemmas and enhancement of the accuracy of the solution, polar or gradient continuum theories may be utilized. The current work is concerned with composites consisting of micropolar matrix and micropolar ellipsoidal particles with periodic distribution throughout the three dimensional space. In particular, the analytical determinations of the effective micropolar elastic moduli tensor, effective micropolar couple stress moduli tensor, and effective micropolar characteristic... 

This paper presents the effect of robotics assisted language learning (RALL) on the vocabulary learning and retention of Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) junior high school students in Tehran, Iran. After taking a vocabulary pre-test, 46 beginner level female students at the age of 12, studying in their first year of junior-high participated in two groups of RALL (30 students) and non-RALL (16 students) in this study. The textbook used was the English book (Prospect-1) devised by the Iranian Ministry of Education for 7th graders, and the vocabulary taught and tested (pre-test and post-test) were taken from this book. Moreover, the treatment given by a teacher accompanied by a... 

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;... 

This paper presents the design characteristics of a new robot Assistant for Social Aims (RASA), being an upper-torso humanoid robot platform currently under final stages of development. This project addresses the need for developing affordable humanoid platforms designed to be utilized in new areas of social robotics research, primarily teaching Persian Sign Language (PSL) to children with hearing disabilities. RASA is characterized by three features which are hard to find at the same time in today’s humanoid robots: its dexterous hand-arm systems enabling it to perform sign language, low development cost, and easy maintenance. In this paper, design procedures and considerations are briefly... 

In recent years the development of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques have enabled social robots to autonomously navigate in routine human workplaces. However, most common SLAM techniques are developed for mapping and localization in static worlds. In this paper, we have developed and analyzed a novel augmentation of the FastSLAM algorithm, including a person tracking module using 2D LiDAR sensor data. Utilizing this module, the SLAM algorithm is capable of filtering measurements coming from walking people who produce noises due to their intrinsic dynamic and unstableness. This augmentation was developed and then tested on our socially assistive mobile robot platform,... 

English literature has not been considered a useful teaching tool in the EFL classrooms of many non-English speaking countries. This is because teaching L2 largely has been regarded as a matter of linguistics. However, Arthur (2006, p.200) points out, "Through the use of literature, a language learning experience might become at the same time a source of immediate pleasure and satisfaction for the student. This possibility makes literature an appealing teaching device for ESL teachers". Certainly, today's English teaching can have an intimate connection to literary works. Reading literature has a vital role to play in teaching foreign language readers that English is a rich, living language,... 

Discouraging the divorce between Language teaching and language testing, dynamic assessment has changed into a strong tool not only for language assessment but also for language development and leaner involvement in the learning process. This study aimed to investigate (a) Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners' off-task self-assessment and on-task self-rating of their writing ability and the impact of a dynamic-assessment-based course on the accuracy of their self-assessment and self-rating, and (b) the interrelationships among teacher rating, self-assessment, and self-rating in the writing performance of 22 engineering students taking a writing course as part of an EAP... 

One of the most difficult aspects of learning a foreign language, particularly in an EFL context, is the retention of vocabulary. Vocabulary learning plays a major role in English language leaner's success. The standard method of presenting up to 20 or more new vocabulary words that students are expected to learn at a given time is not an effective way to help the learners develop vocabulary (Gresten and Baker, 2000). To this end, most ESL/EFL specialists often justify the use of games with reference to the motivation that they can provide for the students. Scholars suggest that many techniques, and word game is one of them. The impact of word game as a reinforcing device on improving... 

Mobile phones as new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning. Given the importance of academic vocabularies for university students, this study tried to investigate the effectiveness of SMS on Iranian university students' vocabulary learning and retention. To this end forty five university freshman students with upper intermediate proficiency level were chosen to take part in this study. During 16 weeks of experiment, the participants of the experimental group (N = 28) were taught 320 head words from the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) via SMS. During the same period of time the participants... 

In this paper, three pairs of children with autism include a pair of twins, two siblings, and two classmates were enrolled in a 12-session robot-assisted group-games program. As many environmental factors were for the most part the same for the siblings as well as genetic factors for the twins, we were able to observe/compare the effect of the designed games on the participants individually and in paired-groups. The results indicated that all participants’ autism severity decreased after the course of the program. Improvement in social skills, social participation/avoidance, and detrimental social behaviors were also observed in the participants with high-functioning autism with close to... 

Social robots may soon be able to play an important role in expanding communication with the deaf. Based on the literature, adaptive user interfaces lead to greater user acceptance and increased teaching efficiency compared to non-adaptive ones. In this paper, we build a robotic architecture able to simultaneously adjust a robot’s teaching parameters according to both the user’s past and present performance, adapt the content of the training, and then implement it on the RASA robot to teach sign language based on these parameters in a manner similar to a human teacher. To do this, a word to teach in sign language, repetition, speed, and emotional valence were chosen to be adaptive using a... 

Sign language is a non-verbal communication tool used by the deaf. A robust sign language recognition framework is needed to develop Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) platforms that are able to interact with humans via sign language. Iranian sign language (ISL) is composed of both static postures and dynamic gestures of the hand and fingers. In this paper, we present a robust framework using a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to recognize dynamic ISL gestures captured by motion capture gloves in Real-Time. To this end, first, a dataset of fifteen ISL classes was collected in time series; then, this dataset was virtually augmented and pre-processed using the “state-image” method to produce a unique... 

Reciprocal interaction and facial expression are some of the most interesting topics in the fields of social and cognitive robotics. On the other hand, children with autism show a particular interest toward robots, and facial expression recognition can improve these children’s social interaction abilities in real life. In this research, a robotic platform has been developed for reciprocal interaction consisting of two main phases, namely as Non-structured and Structured interaction modes. In the Non-structured interaction mode, a vision system recognizes the facial expressions of the user through a fuzzy clustering method. The interaction decision-making unit is combined with a fuzzy finite... 

This paper addresses the lack of proper Learning from Demonstration (LfD) architectures for Sign Language-based Human–Robot Interactions to make them more extensible. The paper proposes and implements a Learning from Demonstration structure for teaching new Iranian Sign Language signs to a teacher assistant social robot, RASA. This LfD architecture utilizes one-shot learning techniques and Convolutional Neural Network to learn to recognize and imitate a sign after seeing its demonstration (using a data glove) just once. Despite using a small, low diversity data set (~ 500 signs in 16 categories), the recognition module reached a promising 4-way accuracy of 70% on the test data and showed... 

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 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,...