Socially Assistive Robots: Using Narrative to Improve Nutrition Intervention. Barry Lumpkin

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1 Socially Assistive Robots: Using Narrative to Improve Nutrition Intervention Barry Lumpkin

2 Introduction The rate of obesity is on the rise Various health risks are associated with being overweight Nutrition interventions are becoming a necessary step Not enough resources to provide widespread interventions Develop a Socially Assistive Robot to motivate dietary changes Believable robotic characters Shown to improve socially related human-robot interactions 1 Autobiographical stories can improve engagement without negative perceptions of deceit 2 1 Simmons, R., et al. (2011). "Believable robot characters." AI Magazine. 32.4: Bickmore, T., Daniel, S., and Langxuan, Y. "Engagement vs. deceit: Virtual humans with human autobiographies." Intelligent Virtual Agents. Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, 2009.

Project Description Using the MIT Dragonbot platform Providing a limited scope nutritional intervention with 1 st grade students Total of 8 sessions with the robot,

3 Project Description Using the MIT Dragonbot platform Providing a limited scope nutritional intervention with 1 st grade students Total of 8 sessions with the robot, ~10 minutes per session This project will focus on the first session in the series Interaction will primarily take the form of a nutrition based food selection game

4 Project Description Data collection Currently ongoing at a local elementary school Wizard of Oz setup as the dialogue and sensing is not yet automated Each session consists of the following segments Robot provides an introduction to itself (Chili the dragon) Robot describes the upcoming dragon race to provide motivation for the nutrition game Nutritional game to choose a type of bread and drink for lunch The robot doesn t know which food it should eat, so the user must help Robot provides feedback on whether food is good or bad by tasting it Exercise dance game for the robot to train after eating Farewell

5 Demo and Examples

6 Demo and Examples

7 Demo and Examples

8 Demo and Examples

9 Demo and Examples

10 Demo and Examples

11 Demo and Examples

12 Demo and Examples

13 Demo and Examples

14 Sample Transcription S: Wake up C: Hi! I m Chili, and I m a dragon. What your name? S: C: Nice to meet you. My tummy is rumbling, I think that means I m hungry. Don t worry, we dragons don t eat people; we actually like the same things you do! Well, I think we like the same food. Our favorite foods are spicy to help us breathe fire. What do you like to eat? S: Uh, from right here? H: Just tell him whatever you like to eat. S: I like to eat pizza C: Yum! That sounds pretty tasty! Oh, did you hear about the big dragon race coming up? S: Yes C: Let me tell you all about it, it s the coolest thing! Every year, the fastest dragons race around Hawaii s volcanos by flying with their wings. Last year, my big sister, Cayenne, was the fastest! I m not that fast yet, but I bet you can help me! Cayenne told me a secret, how she got strong wings that made her fly super fast! The secret, is to eat really, really healthy food! Will you help me figure out what I should eat? S: Um, um, healthy food? C: Great! I can t wait to get good food in my belly! Ooh, I m really hungry now, I should eat something before I get cranky. I wanted a sandwich, but I didn t know what kind of bread to use, so I grabbed as much as I could fit in my lunchbox: white bread, brown bread, some bagels, and a muffin, cause it looked all bready. Why don t you pull out the one you think I should have and I ll taste it! S: Um

15 Sample Transcription H: Just pick anything you want to feed him S: Um, um, brown bread and and a bagel H: Why don t you feed it to him? Give it to him. S: Right now? H: Yeah. C: What do you like about this food? S: It s good C: Mmm, this bread has tasty seeds in it. Cayenne tells me this kind of bread has something called fiber. I already feel like I have more energy. All right! You helped me choose tasty bread for my sandwich, excellent! But now I m thirsty; go ahead and pull out a drink from my lunchbox that you think is best for me. C: What do you like about this food S: Becau It got, it got no, um, no sugar. And healthy C: Oh yeah! Great choice! Milk keeps my bones strong and helps my muscles and brain. Let s choose low fat milk, that way I will be strong, smart, and fit while I train. Do you know what training is? Training is when you practice exercising so you can run fast and win races. Speaking of training, you can help me get started! Let s exercise so I ll be able to flap my wings for the whole race without getting out of breath. You can be my exercise buddy. I love dancing, that s my favorite type of exercise. I try to dance for an hour every day. I even teach Cayenne new dance moves like wiggling around like Jell-O! Do you like to groove to music? S: Um, yes? C: Okay. I have a magical musical player here, can you hear the music? Hey if we both dance, the music will magically get louder. Let s boogie!

16 Sample Transcription C: Come on, let s keep dancing! This music is Dynamite! C: Would you like a different song? S: I don t know C: Okay C: Do you want to take a break from dancing? S: Um, um, I think, yes? C: Okay, I ll show you my new victory dance. I ve been practicing my dancing and came up with a new victory dance that I want to do if I win the dragon race. Do you want to see? S: Yes C: All right! I call this one the volcano! What did you think? S: Did good C: I think maybe I can pump it up and make it a little faster, I ll show you a new dance next time. C: I bet you can show me even more dance moves C: Phew, that was fun. I feel like I have so much energy, I can t wait to train for the race! I think I m gonna take a nap before I do more training, it s just as important to get rest. It was really great to meet you, I can t wait to see you again, thanks for all your help!

17 Results First round playtesting Throughout the nutrition game segment, the user played without saying a single word Added a why did you pick that prompt. Not currently included in the Automated Dialogue System Session 1 data is currently being collected in the actual study and will be transcribed over the next few days. A significant percent of this data will be used to flesh out the dialogue system The remainder of the transcripts will be held out for testing There are a limited number of samples (currently only 10 students have been recorded)

18 Lessons Applied Many of the key lessons for this project were related to the dialogue development Generalizing the robot s responses Needed responses that would work for many inputs Never addressing specifics That sounds pretty tasty doesn t address *what* sounded tasty Limiting open-ended questions Try to avoid giving the users more freedom than the dialogue can handle Certain phrasings change how users reply Do you know anything about the dragon race? Did you hear about the dragon race? Will be discussed further in future work

19 Future Work Several questions require a knowledge base of acceptable answers What s your name? List of names to validate the user really gave a name What do you like to eat? Large data collection of typical replies from the population Some foods should be tasty others should be eww What do you like about this food? Know possible answers and whether they are correct Finish transcribing collected data Use transcriptions to flesh out the dialogue system Finish using the script to add in any dialogue options that were not present in the data collection

20 Questions?

An answer that might come from this is: You know, I haven t. I work out all the time, but maybe I could use something extra.

An answer that might come from this is: You know, I haven t. I work out all the time, but maybe I could use something extra. We all have a little bit of a shy streak within us, and that s OK! It s why we devised this little cheat sheet to help you start conversations that invite people to purchase our transformational products.