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

机器人课程：研究多大的充气软体机器人可用于治疗。

• 批准号: 2731052
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2731052
• 关键词: robot; course; investigation; how; large

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.

当谈到治疗时，当人们封闭、走神、变得心烦意乱、破坏性或混乱时，谈话往往是无效的。对于年轻人、经历过严重焦虑或有情感虐待史的人来说尤其如此。多塞特郡出现了一个独特的项目“HorseCourse”来解决这个问题。马术课程通过学习与地面上经过特殊训练的马匹交流，帮助人们变得平静和专注。这些项目训练人们识别和管理导致他们变得疏离、混乱、封闭或攻击性的情绪。 TheHorseCourse 是一种革命性的心理健康/自我调节方法，具有出色的影响证据 [https://www.thehorsecourse.org/images/pdfs/TheHorseCourse_Evidence_Summary.pdf]。然而，用真马训练虽然非常成功，但对扩展该方法提出了一些挑战。该项目的目标是研究使用动物机器人来重现马术课程的好处。该项目与新型大型充气机器人产生了特别好的共鸣，世界各地开始对这种机器人进行研究，因为它们有利于用户交互。目前与当地公司 AirGiant 合作建造充气巨人，已证明该机器人具有独特的可供性（柔软、大且柔软），可用于与人类进行原创互动。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重现马场的好处。为了解决这个问题，可以解决一些子目标：1）系统回顾动物治疗中研究的因素，以及机器人领域之前如何探索这个问题； 2) 一系列用户评估，以更好地了解 HorseCourse 计划中发挥作用的因素； 3）开发和实现软机器人，实现前面步骤中的观察结果； 4) 与最终用户一起评估最终的机器人设计。