Robot To Help Kids With Visual Impairment Chat With Sighted Friends

Children with visual impairment will be able to participate equally in a balanced discussion thanks to a new accessibility-focused robot that is currently being developed.
A study on using a robot to mediate group talks between kids with mixed-visual abilities was just published by researchers at the Interactive Technologies Institute.

The research was presented by the team at the ACM/IEEE conference in Stockholm this past March, and it has since been included in the Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
The lack of accessible technologies that meet the requirements of children with and without visual impairment has been identified by the study team as a problem that results in disabled children participating less in group discussions.

“Most accessible technologies are developed to be used only by children with disabilities, which excludes them from many classroom activities. Additionally, children with visual impairment have more challenges perceiving conversation and related non-verbal cues,” explains Isabel Neto, the leading researcher, and Ph.D. candidate at Instituto Superior Técnico.

To address this problem, the researchers modified Dash, a widely available robotic toy that facilitates group discussions among kids with mixed visual abilities. The robot listens to each kid while moving between them and staying in front of the one who is speaking at the moment. It uses microphones to gauge how much each child has said. In order to persuade the kid who spoke less in the group to step in, the robot shifts its position and moves toward her.

Dash uses bright, colorful LEDs and verbal utterances to communicate conversation engagement or encourage participation. “The robot’s behaviors were created through software development, specifically designed to be used by mixed-abilities children. Its behaviors are perceived by any child, regardless of their visual acuity,” clarifies the researcher.

The study performed with groups of children aimed to test if the robot intervention would promote equal participation of children with and without visual impairment in group conversations. “We were interested in assessing how balanced the group participation would be. We considered a group balanced whenever children spoke fairly for the same amount of time. On the other hand, we considered unbalanced the groups in which at least one child spoke significantly more or less than the others,” clarifies Isabel Neto.

The study showed that the robot reduced the discrepancy between how much children with and without visual impairments participated. The team reached these results by using what they called a directive strategy. In this case, the robot moves near the least participating child, encouraging them to talk. “Although it did not fully eliminate discrepancies, the robot did reduce this unevenness. For this reason, this is a small yet promising step towards fairer participation of all children in classroom activities,” concludes the researcher.

This research highlights the benefits of creating inclusive technologies that anyone can use, promoting fair and equitable experiences. In the future, the Interactive Technologies Institute research team will perfect the directive strategy to make it feel more organic and natural. “We also want to expand our audiences and explore how we could use a robot on other mixed-ability groups, such as children in the autism spectrum,” she reveals. The researchers hope their findings will positively influence group dynamics in classrooms, workplaces, and homes.

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