Meaningful human control and variable autonomy in human-robot teams for firefighting.

Humans and robots are increasingly collaborating on complex tasks such as firefighting. As robots are becoming more autonomous, collaboration in human-robot teams should be combined with meaningful human control. Variable autonomy approaches can ensure meaningful human control over robots by satisfying accountability, responsibility, and transparency.

Taking a strong interactional stance.

We outline two points of criticism. Firstly, we argue that robots do constitute a separate category of beings in people's minds rather than being mere depictions of non-robotic characters. Secondly, we find that (semi-)automatic processes underpinning communicative interaction play a greater role in shaping robot-directed speech than Clark and Fischer's theory of social robots as depictions indicate.

Addressing people's current and future states in a reinforcement learning algorithm for persuading to quit smoking and to be physically active.

Behavior change applications often assign their users activities such as tracking the number of smoked cigarettes or planning a running route. To help a user complete these activities, an application can persuade them in many ways. For example, it may help the user create a plan or mention the experience of peers.

Getting acquainted: First steps for child-robot relationship formation.

In this article we discuss two studies of children getting acquainted with an autonomous socially assistive robot. The success of the first encounter is key for a sustainable long-term supportive relationship. We provide four validated behavior design elements that enable the robot to robustly get acquainted with the child.

The influence of interdependence and a transparent or explainable communication style on human-robot teamwork.

Humans and robots are increasingly working together in human-robot teams. Teamwork requires communication, especially when interdependence between team members is high. In previous work, we identified a conceptual difference between sharing what you are doing (i.

Users' needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study.

Background: Despite their increasing prevalence and potential, eHealth applications for behavior change suffer from a lack of adherence and from dropout. Advances in virtual coach technology provide new opportunities to improve this. However, these applications still do not always offer what people need.

Interactive Education on Sleep Hygiene with a Social Robot at a Pediatric Oncology Outpatient Clinic: Feasibility, Experiences, and Preliminary Effectiveness.

Objectives: Children with cancer often experience sleep problems, which are associated with many negative physical and psychological health outcomes, as well as with a lower quality of life. Therefore, interventions are strongly required to improve sleep in this population. We evaluated interactive education with respect to sleep hygiene with a social robot at a pediatric oncology outpatient clinic regarding the feasibility, experiences, and preliminary effectiveness.

Using a conversational agent for thought recording as a cognitive therapy task: Feasibility, content, and feedback.

E-mental health for depression is increasingly used in clinical practice, but patient adherence suffers as therapist involvement decreases. One reason may be the low responsiveness of existing programs: especially autonomous systems are lacking in their input interpretation and feedback-giving capabilities. Here, we explore (a) to what extent a more socially intelligent and, therefore, technologically advanced solution, namely a conversational agent, is a feasible means of collecting thought record data in dialog, (b) what people write about in their thought records, (c) whether providing content-based feedback increases motivation for thought recording, a core technique of cognitive therapy that helps patients gain an understanding of how their thoughts cause their feelings.

Natural language processing for cognitive therapy: Extracting schemas from thought records.

The cognitive approach to psychotherapy aims to change patients' maladaptive schemas, that is, overly negative views on themselves, the world, or the future. To obtain awareness of these views, they record their thought processes in situations that caused pathogenic emotional responses. The schemas underlying such thought records have, thus far, been largely manually identified.

Identifying Interaction Patterns of Tangible Co-Adaptations in Human-Robot Team Behaviors.

As robots become more ubiquitous, they will increasingly need to behave as our team partners and smoothly adapt to the (adaptive) human team behaviors to establish successful patterns of collaboration over time. A substantial amount of adaptations present themselves through subtle and unconscious interactions, which are difficult to observe. Our research aims to bring about that enables team learning.

Becoming Team Members: Identifying Interaction Patterns of Mutual Adaptation for Human-Robot Co-Learning.

Becoming a well-functioning team requires continuous collaborative learning by all team members. This is called , conceptualized in this paper as comprising two alternating iterative stages: partners adapting their behavior to the task and to each other (co-adaptation), and partners sustaining successful behavior through communication. This paper focuses on the first stage in human-robot teams, aiming at a method for the identification of recurring behaviors that indicate co-learning.

Quality of Care Perceived by Older Patients and Caregivers in Integrated Care Pathways With Interviewing Assistance From a Social Robot: Noninferiority Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Society is facing a global shortage of 17 million health care workers, along with increasing health care demands from a growing number of older adults. Social robots are being considered as solutions to part of this problem.

Objective: Our objective is to evaluate the quality of care perceived by patients and caregivers for an integrated care pathway in an outpatient clinic using a social robot for patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) interviews versus the currently used professional interviews.

Technological State of the Art of Electronic Mental Health Interventions for Major Depressive Disorder: Systematic Literature Review.

Background: Electronic mental (e-mental) health care for depression aims to overcome barriers to and limitations of face-to-face treatment. Owing to the high and growing demand for mental health care, a large number of such information and communication technology systems have been developed in recent years. Consequently, a diverse system landscape formed.

Socio-Cognitive Engineering of a Robotic Partner for Child's Diabetes Self-Management.

Social or humanoid robots do hardly show up in "the wild," aiming at pervasive and enduring human benefits such as child health. This paper presents a socio-cognitive engineering (SCE) methodology that guides the ongoing research & development for an evolving, longer-lasting human-robot partnership in practice. The SCE methodology has been applied in a large European project to develop a robotic partner that supports the daily diabetes management processes of children, aged between 7 and 14 years (i.

Correction: Controlling Social Stress in Virtual Reality Environments.

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Design and Evaluation of Personalized Motivational Messages by a Virtual Agent that Assists in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Therapy.

Background: Systems incorporating virtual agents can play a major role in electronic-mental (e-mental) health care, as barriers to care still prevent some patients from receiving the help they need. To properly assist the users of these systems, a virtual agent needs to promote motivation. This can be done by offering motivational messages.

Robot for health data acquisition among older adults: a pilot randomised controlled cross-over trial.

Background /objectives: Healthcare professionals (HCP) are confronted with an increased demand for assessments of important health status measures, such as patient-reported outcome measurements (PROM), and the time this requires. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of using an HCP robot assistant, and to test the hypothesis that a robot can autonomously acquire PROM data from older adults.

Design: A pilot randomised controlled cross-over study where a social robot and a nurse administered three PROM questionnaires with a total of 52 questions.

Considering patient safety in autonomous e-mental health systems - detecting risk situations and referring patients back to human care.

Background: Digital health interventions can fill gaps in mental healthcare provision. However, autonomous e-mental health (AEMH) systems also present challenges for effective risk management. To balance autonomy and safety, AEMH systems need to detect risk situations and act on these appropriately.

Friendship with a robot: Children's perception of similarity between a robot's physical and virtual embodiment that supports diabetes self-management.

Objective: The PAL project develops a conversational agent with a physical (robot) and virtual (avatar) embodiment to support diabetes self-management of children ubiquitously. This paper assesses 1) the effect of perceived similarity between robot and avatar on children's' friendship towards the avatar, and 2) the effect of this friendship on usability of a self-management application containing the avatar (a) and children's motivation to play with it (b).

Methods: During a four-day diabetes camp in the Netherlands, 21 children participated in interactions with both agent embodiments.

Reminders make people adhere better to a self-help sleep intervention.

The experiment presented in this paper investigated the effects of different kinds of reminders on adherence to automated parts of a cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) delivered via a mobile device. Previous studies report that computerized health interventions can be effective. However, treatment adherence is still an issue.

Virtual agent-mediated appraisal training: a single case series among Dutch firefighters.

: First responders are a prime example of professionals that are at a high risk of being exposed to traumatic experiences. Reappraisal as a coping strategy might help first responders to better cope with their emotional responses to traumatic events. : This study investigated the effects of repeated sessions of a digital reappraisal training among seven firefighters.

Self-Monitoring Kidney Function Post Transplantation: Reliability of Patient-Reported Data.

Background: The high frequency of outpatient visits after kidney transplantation is burdensome to both the recovering patient and health care capacity. Self-monitoring kidney function offers a promising strategy to reduce the number of these outpatient visits.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate whether it is safe to rely on patients' self-measurements of creatinine and blood pressure, using data from a self-management randomized controlled trial.

How should a virtual agent present psychoeducation? Influence of verbal and textual presentation on adherence.

Background And Objective: With the rise of autonomous e-mental health applications, virtual agents can play a major role in improving trustworthiness, therapy outcome and adherence. In these applications, it is important that patients adhere in the sense that they perform the tasks, but also that they adhere to the specific recommendations on how to do them well. One important construct in improving adherence is psychoeducation, information on the why and how of therapeutic interventions.

A Therapy System for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Using a Virtual Agent and Virtual Storytelling to Reconstruct Traumatic Memories.

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is well treatable, many people do not get the desired treatment due to barriers to care (such as stigma and cost). This paper presents a system that bridges this gap by enabling patients to follow therapy at home. A therapist is only involved remotely, to monitor progress and serve as a safety net.

Renal transplant patient acceptance of a self-management support system.

Background: Self-management support systems (SMSS) have been proposed for renal transplant patients to increase their autonomy and reduce the number of hospital visits. For the design and implementation of such systems, it is important to understand factors influencing patients' acceptance of a SMSS. This paper aims to identify these key factors.