The robot course: an investigation of how large, inflatable, soft robots can be used for therapy.

当谈到治疗时，当人们闭嘴、神志不清、变得不安、扰乱或混乱时，交谈往往是无效的。对于年轻人来说尤其如此，他们经历了严重的焦虑或有过情感虐待的历史。多塞特郡出现了一个独特的项目--马术课程(HorseCourse)来解决这一问题。马术课程通过学习如何与地面上经过专门训练的马匹交流，帮助人们变得冷静和专注。这些项目训练人们识别和管理情绪，这些情绪会导致他们变得无拘无束、混乱、封闭或咄咄逼人。马术课程是一种革命性的心理健康/自我调节方法，具有极好的影响证据[https://www.thehorsecourse.org/images/pdfs/TheHorseCourse_Evidence_Summary.pdf].然而，用真正的马训练，尽管非常成功，但对推广这种方法提出了一些挑战。这个项目的目标是调查动物机器人的使用，以重现马术课程的好处。该项目与一种新型机器人--大型充气机器人--产生了特别好的共鸣，这种机器人开始在世界各地进行研究，以利于用户交互。目前与制造充气巨人的当地公司AirGiant的合作表明，该机器人具有一种独特的启示(柔软、巨大和柔软)，可以被利用来创造与人类的原始互动。该项目的关键研究问题是调查是否有可能通过充气机器人再现HorseCourse的好处。为了解决这一问题，可以解决一些子目标：1)系统地回顾动物治疗中已经调查的因素，以及机器人领域以前是如何探索这一问题的；2)一系列用户评估，以更好地了解在HorseCourse计划中起作用的因素；3)开发和实施软机器人，实现前面步骤中看到的观察；4)与最终用户一起评估最终的机器人设计。

When it comes to therapy, talking is often ineffective when people shut down, zone out, become upset, disruptive, or chaotic. This is particularly the case for young people, individuals who experience severe anxiety or have history of emotional abuse. A unique program, the HorseCourse, has emerged in Dorset to address this. The HorseCourse helps people to become calm and focused by learning to communicate with specially trained horses from the ground. The programs train people to recognize and manage emotions causing them to become disengaged, chaotic, shut down or aggressive. TheHorseCourse is a revolutionary approach to mental health/self-regulation with excellent impact evidence [https://www.thehorsecourse.org/images/pdfs/TheHorseCourse_Evidence_Summary.pdf]. However, training with real horses, although it being highly successful, presents some challenge to scaling the approach. The goal of this project is to investigate the use of animal robots to reproduce the benefits of the HorseCourse. The project resonates particularly well with a new type of robot, large inflatable ones, which start to be investigated in multiple places in the world for their benefit to user interaction. A current collaboration with AirGiant, a local company, building inflatable giant, has demonstrated that the robot has a unique affordance (being soft, large, and squishy) which can be exploited to create original interaction with humans.The key research question for this project is to investigate if this is possible to reproduce the benefits of the HorseCourse through an inflatable robot. To address this a number of sub-objectives can be tackled: 1) a systematic review of what factors have been investigated in animal therapy, as well as how the field of robotic has explore this question before; 2) a series of user evaluations to better understand the factors at play in the HorseCourse program; 3) the development and implementation of a soft robot which implement the observations seen in previous steps; 4) an evaluation of the final robot design with end-users.