Mississippi State University Associate Professor Cindy Bethel and New Hope Elementary teacher Jennifer Caldwell hope to soon set up a play date for two robots.
One, a robotic stuffed dog named Therabot, was designed by Bethel with the help of her students. The other, a robotic stuffed cat called CAT, which stands for Calming Autistic Tendencies, was designed by fifth grader Ashton Budgins and fourth grader Aubri Stacy at New Hope.
Bethel and Caldwell don’t know much about each other’s robots yet but admit they sound similar — both robots are designed to help humans in need.
Bethel has been working at MSU since 2011. She specializes in social robotics, which is the study of how humans interact with technology.
“For a long time we were just trying to get robots to work,” Bethel said. “And now we’re starting to think more about, ‘Well, how are people going to interact with these robots when they’re introduced into their lives?’ So social robotics is looking at the social interactions between humans and robots. And they think that’s going to become a much more prevalent field as robotics becomes more popular and more people are exposed to them.”
Therabot
In 2012, Bethel began designing Therabot to provide comfort during therapy for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder and similar conditions.
“It’s basically a substitute for animal-assisted therapy,” Bethel said. “Because some people are allergic to dogs. Some people can’t care for a dog or a pet so this gives them that same support system without having the care factors.”
The robot can assist either while the patient is in the clinician’s office or at home, though Bethel imagines it eventually ending up in nursing homes or children’s hospitals as well.
“It’s cute and cuddly and it’s not designed to walk,” Bethel said. “It’s meant to sit in your lap and provide comfort with nuzzling motions or different types of sounds. It has touch sensors in it so when you touch it and squeeze it or pet it, it can tell that it’s being interacted with and will respond accordingly.”
Bethel calls it “electronics bundled with love.”
MSU junior Kenna Baugus has been working with Therabot all semester.
“I’ve loved it,” she said. “I feel like I’ve learned more from Therabot than from classes. I’m learning to (use) the 3-D printer and I’m … making the sensors for Therabot.”
Bethel and her students have had the chance to demonstrate Therabot at robotics conferences and schools for the last several years. Everyone so far has responded positively to the robot, Bethel said.
It’s also been a good way to watch how people who aren’t robotics students or professors interact with it.
“For instance, I put a sensor (in its head), just thinking they could pet it,” Baugus said. “But most people were (treating it) like a real dog and petting it under the chin. So we’ll be able to adapt easily and move our sensors where we saw people touching it more.”
Bethel’s next step is to take Therabot to Australia next spring as a Fulbright Scholar. She’ll spend four months at the University of Technology in Sydney, measuring responses of PTSD patients who talk about stress while holding Therabot, while holding the stuffed animal non-robotic prototype of Therabot and while not holding anything.
“We’ll be measuring different physiological … responses as well as surveys and gathering different types of information from them to determine the kind of effectiveness of Therabot for providing that support when talking about things that are sensitive in nature,” Bethel said.
CAT
The students at New Hope learned about Therabot when Stacy’s mother found some information about it online.
Caldwell then reached out to Bethel.
“(I said), ‘We’ve got a cat. We want it to meet your dog,'” Caldwell said.
Caldwell is no novice when it comes to robotics either. She oversees students in New Hope Elementary’s gifted and talented program, where Budgins and Stacy spent the last two months designing CAT.
The two students make up one of NHE’s three robotics teams that participate in competitions where they design robots to play games and perform tasks. This will be the second year New Hope students will attend the VEX IQ Challenge, a competition of elementary-age robotics students from all over the world. The competition this year is in Kentucky from April 29 through May 1.
But this year, Budgins and Stacy went a step further to design a robot and put together a presentation for the competition’s STEM Research Project, which required students to research real-world robotics engineering and ethics. After interviewing New Hope special education teachers, the duo started designing a robot to help people with autism — who are soothed by touch and by repetitive motions.
CAT was designed pretty much specifically for a non-verbal autistic student at New Hope High School, who the students worked with. It started out as a leftover robot from the VEX competitions. Budgins and Stacy turned one of the robot’s “arms” into a “tail” so that when the robot raised its arm, it would touch the student.
“Then Ms. Caldwell found the cat in her closet or attic or something. … So we decided to put that around it,” Budgins said. “Then the tail was going up and down. So we took it over … to the high school for those autistic kids.”
The high school special education teacher then requested Budgins and Stacy change the tail so that it was brushing flat across her student’s arm, rather than simply touching him on the downward swing of an up and down motion.
Meanwhile, Stacy designed different tails out of various household items, from fuzzy socks to old wire brushes, the latter of which is the autistic student’s favorite.
Now when Stacy and Budgins take CAT to the autistic student’s classroom, the student immediately comes to them.
“As soon as you come in, he goes to (CAT),” Budgins said.
A bright future
While Bethel said she doesn’t know when she’ll get the chance to meet the New Hope students and see CAT, she’s encouraged by younger students becoming engaged in robotics.
“I think it is wonderful that they are incorporating this in pre-college and especially elementary school curriculum and extra-curricular activities,” she said. “It gives children the opportunity to apply STEM-related principles in hands-on and visible activities, which I feel will stimulate interest in these important educational topics. We are seeing more involvement with children and robotics with the advent of new robots that are geared toward earlier ages even in the pre-school age range. I believe it is never too early to let children experience robotics and STEM-related topic areas.”
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