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

当谈到治疗时，当人们关闭，走神，变得沮丧，破坏性或混乱时，谈话通常是无效的。对于那些经历过严重焦虑或有过情感虐待史的年轻人来说，情况尤其如此。为了解决这个问题，多塞特郡出现了一个独特的项目——马场。马场通过学习与地面上受过特殊训练的马匹交流，帮助人们变得冷静和专注。这些程序训练人们识别和管理情绪，这些情绪会使他们变得不投入、混乱、封闭或好斗。the horseccourse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，用真马训练虽然非常成功，但对扩大这种方法提出了一些挑战。这个项目的目标是研究使用动物机器人来重现马场的好处。该项目与一种新型的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上多个地方进行研究，以造福于用户互动。目前与当地公司AirGiant合作，建造充气巨人，已经证明机器人具有独特的功能（软，大，黏糊糊），可以利用它来与人类进行原始的互动。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，以及机器人领域以前如何探索这个问题；2)一系列用户评价，以更好地了解在马场项目中起作用的因素；3)开发和实现一个软机器人，实现在前面步骤中看到的观察；4)与最终用户对最终机器人设计进行评估。

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.