Non-verbal communication with a social robot peer: Towards robot assisted interactive sign language tutoring

Neziha Akalin, Pinar Uluer, Hatice Köse

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper presents a humanoid robot assisted imitation based interactive game for Sign Language (SL) tutoring. The game is specially designed for children with communication impairments. The work presented is a part of Robot Sign Language Tutor∗ project. In this study, a Robovie R3 humanoid robot is used to express a set of chosen words in SL using hand movements, body and face gestures. The robot platform is specially modified with LEDs in face (for non-manual facial gestures), additional DoFs in wrist and 5 independent fingers at hands for robust SL generation. The robot is able to communicate with the participant by recognizing signs and colored flashcards through a RGB-D camera based system and generating a selected subset of signs, including motivating facial gestures, in return. The game also aims to improve children's imitation and turn-taking skills and to teach the words semantically. Current paper presents results from the preliminary study with a group of hearing impaired children, where children had almost 100% score in recognizing the robot's signs from a subset of 12 words.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2014 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Humanoids 2014
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages1122-1127
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781479971749
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Feb 2015
Event2014 14th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Humanoids 2014 - Madrid, Spain
Duration: 18 Nov 201420 Nov 2014

Publication series

NameIEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots
Volume2015-February
ISSN (Print)2164-0572
ISSN (Electronic)2164-0580

Conference

Conference2014 14th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Humanoids 2014
Country/TerritorySpain
CityMadrid
Period18/11/1420/11/14

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 IEEE.

Keywords

  • Humanoid robots
  • interaction games
  • non-verbal communication
  • sign language

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