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Social cue teaching robot?

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ASPartOfMe
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13 Jan 2018, 2:41 am

A new robot is teaching people with autism to navigate office politics

Quote:
Researchers at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University say they’ve invented a solution: Alyx, a robotic emotion teacher.

Alyx’s face is simple, with very few features: humanoid, Rajendran explains, but not human-like. And that’s on purpose; human faces generate lots of small extraneous signals that people with autism can find difficult to decode. By contrast, Alyx’s basic, easily controllable robotic face makes it an ideal teacher of social cues.
In a training session with Alyx, a user would perform a clerical task, like filing paper, and Alyx would respond with a sign of approval or disapproval. Alyx’s creators say this is the main hurdle that adults with autism need help getting over.


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Goth Fairy
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13 Jan 2018, 4:08 am

My first thought is how much did that robot cost?

My second thought is how can that possibly help anyone in real life?

Actually no, my first thought was OMG what a cute robot I love it! But after that it doesn't make a lot of sense.

If someone draws a sad face, I can look at it and identify the emotion. The problem is that real faces are nothing the like the symbols we use to describe them. The robot's surprise even had its eyes popping out, cartoon style. That never happens! OK, so it might be easier to learn the robots expressions, but that does not mean I would then be able to link those expressions to actual human expressions, which are so much more subtle, fleeting, and varied.

I think the idea sounds fun, but I think that a much more sensible approach is to ask for honest and open communication from your co-workers and employers.


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Trogluddite
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14 Jan 2018, 1:20 pm

I wonder, can it be programmed to simulate an autistic person's facial expressions and prosody, for the training of non-autistic people? :wink: :lol:

I might consider getting one if it could be programmed to tell me why someone has a particular look on their face. I can't for the life of me work out why the hugely expensive robot is required, though - surely an animated cartoon on my PC or phone would do the job just as well.


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magz
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14 Jan 2018, 2:42 pm

I wonder if any employable adult autistic person did not learn the basic facial expressions in their life. From cartoons, emoticons, whatever.
The problem are those subtle, non-basic ones. I've never been able to read "meaningful glances" and ended in trouble a lot of times because of this.
The problem is, when I'm focused on my work, I'm not focused on someone's facial expression.
The problem is the amount of work I need to do to refocus and interpret someone's body language.

The solution is being direct in communicating with me. Because even if I have learned to interpret a broad spectrum of facial expressions and other aspects of body language, it's a big distraction and a lot of hard work to do it, and then it takes a lot of time to focus on my work again.
And I guess an employer would prefer me to be efficient.
So learning direct communication would be a better investment.


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