COMP 150-14 Social Assistive Robotics

This course will provide an introduction to the state-of-the-art in socially intelligent assistive robotics. This exciting new area of research combines assistive robotics, in which robots provide help or assistance to human users, especially users with disabilities, with social robotics, in which robots interact with people in socially appropriate ways. A major area of focus for the course will be socially assistive robotics, in which robots provide assistance with health, wellness, and education-related goals through hands-off social interaction alone, but the course will also touch on recent work on incorporating socially intelligent behavior into more traditional assistive robotic technologies such as wheelchair-mounted arms and mobile manipulators. Students completing this course will become familiar with the technical, experimental, and ethical challenges of research in this area through readings from robotics, computer science, and disability studies. Students will be expected to read and discuss papers, give short presentations, and complete an individual or small group project in which they develop a research or design project from conception to final evaluation. Cross listed as ME-0149-SIR