Abstract
This paper introduces a novel robotic platform, called RASA (Robot Assistant for Social Aims). This educational social robot is designed and constructed to facilitate teaching Persian Sign Language (PSL) to children with hearing disabilities. There are three predominant characteristics from which design guidelines of the robot are generated. First, the robot is designed as a fully functional interactive social robot with children as its social service recipients. Second, it comes with the ability to perform PSL, which demands a dexterous upper-body of 29 actuated degrees of freedom. Third, it has a relatively low development cost for a robot in its category. This funded project, addresses the challenges resulting from the at times divergent requirements of these characteristics. Accordingly, the hardware design of the robot is discussed, and an evaluation of its sign language realization performance has been carried out. The inspected recognition rates of certain signs of PSL, performed by RASA, have also been reported.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Kanda, T., et al.: Interactive robots as social partners and peer tutors for children: a field trial. Hum. Comput. Interact. 19(1), 61–84 (2004)
Ishiguro, H., et al.: Robovie: an interactive humanoid robot. Industrial Robot: an International Journal 28 (6), 498–504 (2001)
Han, J., Kim, D.: r-learning services for elementary school students with a teaching assistant robot. In: 2009 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). IEEE (2009)
Chang, C.-W., et al.: Exploring the possibility of using humanoid robots as instructional tools for teaching a second language in primary school. Educ. Technol. Soc. 13(2), 13–24 (2010)
Sugimoto, M.: A mobile mixed-reality environment for children’s storytelling using a handheld projector and a robot. IEEE Trans. Learn. Technol. 4(3), 249–260 (2011)
Alemi, M., Meghdari, A., Ghazisaedy, M.: Employing humanoid robots for teaching english language in iranian junior high-schools. Int. J. Humanoid Rob. 11(03), 1450022 (2014)
Courtin, C.: The impact of sign language on the cognitive development of deaf children the case of theories of mind. J. Deaf. Stud. Deaf. Educ. 5(3), 266–276 (2000)
Marschark, M., Hauser, P.C.: How Deaf Children Learn: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know. OUP, New York (2011)
Freel, B.L., et al.: Deaf individuals’ bilingual abilities: American sign language proficiency, reading skills, and family characteristics. Psychology 2(01), 18 (2011)
Mellon, N.K., et al.: Should all deaf children learn sign language? Pediatrics 136(1), 170–176 (2015)
Klaudia, K.: The benefits of sign language for deaf children with and without cochlear implant (s). European Scientific Journal 4 (2013)
Kose, H., et al.: Evaluation of the robot assisted sign language tutoring using video-based studies. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 4(3), 273–283 (2012)
Kose, H., Akalin, N., Uluer, P.: Socially interactive robotic platforms as sign language tutors. Int. J. Humanoid Rob. 11(01), 1450003 (2014)
Köse, H., et al.: The effect of embodiment in sign language tutoring with assistive humanoid robots. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 7(4), 537–548 (2015)
Janssen, J.B., et al.: Motivating Children to Learn Arithmetic with an Adaptive Robot Game. Springer, Berlin (2011)
Nalin, M., et al.: Children’s adaptation in multi-session interaction with a humanoid robot. In: RO-MAN, 2012 IEEE. IEEE (2012)
Gouaillier, D., et al.: Mechatronic design of NAO humanoid. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2009. ICRA’09. IEEE (2009)
Diftler, M.A., et al.: Robonaut 2-The First Humanoid Robot in Space. In: 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). IEEE (2011)
Metta, G., et al.: The iCub humanoid robot: an open platform for research in embodied cognition. In: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems. ACM (2008)
Asimo specifications. Available from: http://asimo.honda.com/asimo-specs/
Duffy, B.R.: Anthropomorphism and the social robot. Robot. Auton. Syst. 42(3), 177–190 (2003)
Fink, J.: Anthropomorphism and human likeness in the design of robots and human-robot interaction. In: International Conference on Social Robotics. Springer (2012)
Mori, M., MacDorman, K.F., Kageki, N.: The uncanny valley [from the field]. IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 19(2), 98–100 (2012)
Fong, T., Nourbakhsh, I., Dautenhahn, K.: A survey of socially interactive robots. Robot. Auton. Syst. 42(3), 143–166 (2003)
Woods, S.: Exploring the design space of robots: children’s perspectives. Interact. Comput. 18(6), 1390–1418 (2006)
Valli, C., Lucas, C.: Linguistics of American Sign Language: an Introduction. Gallaudet Univ Press, Washington (2000)
Stokoe, W.C.: Sign language structure: an outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf. J. Deaf. Stud. Deaf. Educ. 10(1), 3–37 (2005)
Sanjabi, A., et al.: Zaban eshareh irani (ZEI) and its fingerspelling system. Sign Language Studies 16(4), 500–534 (2016)
Cipriani, C., Controzzi, M., Carrozza, M.C.: The SmartHand transradial prosthesis. J. Neuroeng. Rehabil. 8(1), 1 (2011)
Schmitz, A., et al.: Design, realization and sensorization of the dexterous icub hand. In: 2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids). IEEE (2010)
Hirose, S., Umetani, Y.: The development of soft gripper for the versatile robot hand. Mech. Mach. Theory 13(3), 351–359 (1978)
Saldien, J., et al.: Expressing emotions with the social robot probo. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 2(4), 377–389 (2010)
Hegel, F., Eyssel, F., Wrede, B.: The social robot ‘flobi’: key concepts of industrial design. In: RO-MAN, 2010, IEEE. IEEE (2010)
Ghorbandaei Pour, A., Taheri, A., Alemi, M., Meghdari, A.: Human–robot facial expression reciprocal interaction platform: case studies on children with autism. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 10(2), 179–198 (2018)
Landis, J.R., Koch, G.G.: The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33(1), 159–174 (1977)
Breazeal, C.L.: Designing Sociable Robots. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)
Tamaddoni, S.H., Jafari, F., Meghdari, A., Sohrabpour, S.: Biped hopping control based on spring loaded inverted pendulum model. Int. J. Humanoid Rob. 7(2), 263–280 (2010)
Taheri, A.R., Alemi, M., Meghdari, A., et al.: Clinical application of humanoid robots in playing imitation games for autistic children in Iran. Procedia. Soc. Behav. Sci. 176, 898–906 (2015)
Meghdari, A., Fahimi, F.: On the first-order decoupling of dynamical equations of motion for elastic multibody systems as applied to a two-link manipulator. Multibody Sys. Dyn. 5(1), 1–20 (2001)
Acknowledgments
This project is in part supported and funded by the Iranian National Science Foundation-INSF (http://en.insf.org/) and the Office of the Vice-President in Science and Technology, Iran. We appreciate the Iran Society of Deaf People Family (ISDPF) for providing the resources needed to conduct the survey reported in the article. Our gratitude also goes to the Iran Telecommunication Research Center-ITRC (http://en.itrc.ac.ir/) for their recent support to carry out the future steps of this ongoing project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Meghdari, A., Alemi, M., Zakipour, M. et al. Design and Realization of a Sign Language Educational Humanoid Robot. J Intell Robot Syst 95, 3–17 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-018-0860-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-018-0860-2