Luis Sentis will lead a session, A Developers Primer for Coding Human Behavior in Bots, at SXSW on Sunday, March 12, 2017.

Human-centered robotics hold a special place in the robotics field because they both mimic human sensing and cognitive behavior, and are designed to assist humans for safety and productivity. To explore human-centered robotics is to explore human beings and how we sense the world, analyze complex and often conflicting information, and act upon our findings, modifying perception, understanding, and action as new information is available.

Such machines could be of great practical benefit to humans on long space flights to Mars, for instance, or as human proxies in hazardous environments such as a chemical spill or even ordinary circumstances like education or elder care.

Obviously, creating human-centered robots poses many challenges in conception, design, and the hardware and software that support them. My own work in this burgeoning field focuses on designing high-performance series elastic actuators for robotic movements, embedded control systems, motion planning for dynamic locomotion, and real-time optimal control for human-centered robots.

Once we have a platform for human-centered robotics, and once we can create the hardware and software and the logic to drive them, we can turn to its real-world applications, which are many.

Most readers probably have only a passing acquaintance with human-centered robotics, so allow me to use this brief blog to introduce a few ideas about this topic and its challenges.

Humanoid and Human-Centered

Since perhaps the 1950s, television and the movies have often portrayed humanoid robotsrobots that take roughly human formentertaining us with how closely they mimic humans or by how far they fall short. Sometimes, in a dramatic plot turn, a humanoid robot becomes malevolent or uncontrollable by humans.

I prefer the term human-centered robot, because it most closely describes my field of endeavor: How to create a robot that is focused on assisting a human being; sometimes guided by a human, but also learning on its own what action or behavior would be most helpful to that human.

In my view, we do not yet have sufficient evidence to say that humanoid robots are most effective when interacting with humans. They may well be, but we do not have definitive data on the question.

However, it appears anecdotally true that humanoid robots fire the human imagination and that has its benefits. In addition to their portrayal in popular media, I have found that humanoid robots draw the most, well, human interest. Soon after creating one we named Dreamer in 2013, in the Human Centered Robotics Lab (HCRL) at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, we generally received more attention from curious students, engineers, investors andwouldnt you know itmovie producers. (Dreamer eventually had a bit part in Transformers 4 in 2014.) If humanoid robots help draw attention and interest to human-centered robotics, so be it.

Applications and Productivity

The more important aspect of this field is how to create human-centered robotics that sense their surroundings and either respond to human directions or intuit what actions would best serve their human counterpart.

Ive mentioned the possible robotic applications of space travel, perhaps as a companion to astronauts on a space walk, as a human proxy in hazardous environments or as a caregiver to an elderly person. In each case, the notion of productivity is different.

If you think of productivity for robotics generally in a manufacturing setting, it can be measured in terms of hours of work performed and profits earned. But in a long space journey to Mars, productivity will be measured instead in terms of the astronauts enhanced safety and ability to accomplish difficult tasks. In a hazmat spill, productivity might be measured in terms of human lives saved. In elder care, how well did a robot perform in changing bandages or applying ointment to a sore, preserving the persons health?

Robot Knows Best

Another quest in human-centered robotics is to create the ability of a robot to not just predict human behavior, but to perform what I call intervention. Whatever its level of complexity, can we build a robot with logic that assesses a situation for optimal actions, whether directed by a human or not? This translates to a robots ability to say to itself, Well, the human is operating the system in such a way. We could do better if computationally I have a hypothesis about what would be best for the human and intervene with that particular behavior.

This ability requires pairing social cognitive theories with mathematics. And I have found that advances are possible for what I call self-efficacy, which is basically the self-confidence to achieve a certain behavior.

At this point, self-efficacy can be achieved in very simple scenarios. One potential application is to use a human-centered robot to motivate students to solve problems by sensing and reacting to students level of engagement, then producing an interaction that motivates the student and enhances learning. I hope to demonstrate this and give attendees a chance to code such behavior in a human-centered robot at SXSW.

Touch and Whole Body Sensing

One major way in which humans interact is through touch. We place a hand on a shoulder or grasp someones forearm to gain their attention. Robotsparticularly humanoid ones with mobilityare likely to be large and quick, so touch becomes an important element in the safety of their human counterparts. We do not want a robot that runs into an astronaut on a space walk or pins someone to a wall. Thus, we are developing what I call whole body sensing. Though some in this field are pursuing something known as sensory skin, at the HCRL we have taken a more economical approach to minimize the amount of electronics needed.

We use a distributed sensor array on the robots surface, but they number in the dozens, not the thousands employed in sensory skin. Instead, we combine different sensing modalities internal to the robot, such as accelerometers, which aid stabilization, and vibration sensors that enable the machine to triangulate information on whats happening in the immediate environment. This enables the robot to respond to human touch, but within the context of other information it is receiving from its environment. We call this whole-body contact awareness, a combination of internal and external sensing and awareness.

Spin-offs

I hope this mere glimpse into the world of human-centered robotics piques your curiosity. It may serve to attract those who wish to work in the field. But the general public should also understand that advances in this field will eventually make their way into human-centered robotics in our homes, our businesses, manufacturing, agriculture, smart cities, the Internet of Things, you name it. Well have systems somedaywe already do, with limited abilitiesto sense human behaviors and intervene to produce optimal conditions based on an understanding of whats best for the people involved in a particular situation.

Today, we have smart thermostats that learn our preferences for heating and cooling our homes. Tomorrow, we may have human-centered robotic systems that optimize our cities.

Luis Sentis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. He also leads UT Austins Human Centered Robotics Laboratory and is co-founder of Apptronik Systems Inc., a contractor for NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Originally posted here:
The Future of Human-Centered Robotics - Electronic Design

A mouse watches a video of another mouse scratching and becomes itchy. This means contagious scratching isn't based on smells or being familiar with the itchy mouse.

Humans and other social animals suffer from something called contagious itching. It's when you see somebody else scratching and suddenly need to scratch yourself, too. Now, a group of scientists led by Zhou-Feng Chen at the Center for the Study of Itch at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered that mice have the same problem. In the process, the scientists may have identified what causes some contagious behaviors.

Once Chen and his colleagues had established that mice have contagious itching just like other mammals, they wanted to know more. How did such behavior arise in the neurocircuitry of mouse brains? One possibility was that it was a kind of empathetic reaction to mice they knew well or that it was a response to smelling or touching an itchy mouse. But they found that mice could catch itches from strange miceand even from mice they saw on video (see video above). So clearly all they needed was to see another itchy mouse to get itchy themselves.

Chen and his team then dove straight into the neurobiology of the mice. Brain scans of the scratching mice revealed activity in a region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, whose neurons emitted a chemical called gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP). By switching GRP on and off in mouse brains, the researchers discovered that it governed only contagious scratching. Mice with blocked GRP still got itchy, but they didn't start scratching when they saw other scratching mice.

The researchers used optogenetics, or light stimulation, to trigger activity in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, where social scratching is processed. At first the mouse in this video seems nonplussed, then it starts scratching frantically.

Then the researchers wondered if they could induce contagious scratching even when there were no other mice nearby to catch it from. So they injected GRP directly into their subjects' brains and also used brain implants that stimulated electrical signaling in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Both types of treatment caused the mice to engage in frantic scratching, as if they had just seen one of their fellow rodents scratching themselves. In a paper for Science, Chen and his colleagues suggest that this means contagious scratching is a kind of involuntary response, hardwired into the brain.

University of Sussex neuroscientist Anil Seth, who was not involved in the research, told The Guardian that "very deep and evolutionary ancient mechanisms might be involved."

What kind of evolutionary pressures would create such a fundamental process in the brain? "It's possible that when a lot of mice are scratching, maybe it warns other mice that this is a place that has a lot of insects, and you'd better start scratching before it is too late," Chen told Live Science.

He and his colleagues write that their work also "may have implications for our understanding of neural circuits that control socially contagious behaviors." In other words, it's possible that there are other socially contagious activities in animals that could be induced by brain implants.

It's hard to deny that this sounds like the first step toward some kind of Matrix-like dystopia, where brain implants fool us into thinking we're eating tasty steaks. But that's unlikely. Human behavior is far more complex than what we see in mice. Still, this research has revealed something fascinating about how mammal brains work. With a little neurochemical intervention, scientists can induce social reflexes in mice who are entirely alone.

Science, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/science.aak9748

Listing image by Science

Link:
Creepy mouse experiment helps scientists understand contagious behavior - Ars Technica

Opinion | Column

the picture of health

When you think about the phrase medical research the image that probably enters your mind is a white-coated scientist, carefully pipetting chemicals, culturing cells or observing something under a microscope. For centuries, research in the basic scienceschemistry, physics and biologyproduced medicines most substantive advances. However, a shifting landscape of disease suggests that medicine will have to adopt discoveries from a broader array of disciplines, such as psychology and economics, if it is to effectively address the challenges of the future.

Translational research is the process of transitioning discoveries from bench to bedsideleveraging fundamental scientific discoveries into applicable treatments for patients. Take for example the development of cancer therapies. A fundamental understanding of cell division led to the discovery of agents that halt that process. These agents were then developed into medications that target rapidly dividing cancer cells. Similarly, research about human behavior and decision-making can be leveraged to create interventions to treat diseases driven by choices.

In industrialized nations, the landscape of disease is rapidly shifting. Due to medical advances in the treatment of infectious disease and traumatic injury, American mortality is increasingly driven by chronic, and often preventable, disease. In 1900, 23.1 percent of all deaths were attributed to pneumonia, influenza and tuberculosis and just 3.7 percent of deaths were attributed to cancer. However, in 2005, influenza and pneumonia accounted for just 2.6 percent of deaths while cancer contributed 22.8 percent. The discoveries of chemists, biologists and physicists have radically improved the survival of cancer patients. However, research from the behavioral sciences can help craft interventions that lower the risk of developing the disease at all.

Inducing behavioral change could have a major effect on health outcomes. In 2010, it was estimated that 42.7 percent of the cancers in Britain could be attributed to lifestyle factors, such as obesity, smoking and exercise. Psychological studies shed light on the most effective ways to elicit a lifestyle change. For example, motivational interviewing is a technique used to prompt and support patients in making change. This technique seeks to address ambivalence to change by eliciting patients own motivation. Using this approach to prompt behavioral changerather than confronting or persuading patientsresults in statistically significant improvements in health. Studies have shown that motivational interviewing results in increased weight loss and exercise, decreased viral load among HIV positive patients, and lower blood pressure and cholesterol values.

Another non-traditional discipline that is particularly suited to crafting health interventions is behavioral economics, which combines the fundamentals of economic theory with insights from psychology. Behavioral economics challenges the assumption that humans behave as fully informed and rational actors and instead understands decision-making as a process with predictable biases. For example, psychological and economic studies have shown that humans overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue delayed rewards. In health terms, this means that the immediate joy of a donut is overvalued against the amorphous increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the future. Similarly, the hassle of taking a medication every day may seem more onerous than the potential progression of future disease. Since these biases are predictable, interventions can be be designed to anticipate and counteract the bias, or use bias to predispose us to healthy, rather than unhealthy behavior.

Investigators at the University of Pennsylvania used findings from behavioral economics to create an intervention to increase adherence to warfarin, an anticoagulant that must be taken consistently to be effective. In the study, a machine recorded each time a dose of the medication was taken and gave the patient with an entry in a lottery with small prizes. The incentive increased adherence to medication, better than a simple reminder message. Given the fact that discontinuation of warfarin has major health risks, and patients who discontinue warfarin typically incur an additional $5,000 in annual healthcare expenditures, this intervention could have significant clinical implications.

Information from psychology about human decision makingand human errorcan also be used to help physicians and surgeons provide better care for patients. Industries such as aviation, manufacturing, and nuclear power, have long incorporated research about human error into their systems design. Their systems anticipate and respond to human mistakes, allowing for correction before an error becomes critical. These systems leave nothing to chance or fallible human memory. While medicine has been slower to adopt this mentality, reports suggesting as many as 98,000 die annually as the result of medical errors have spurred action. Simple, evidence-based interventions that anticipate human error can have a major impactimplementing a infection prevention checklist dropped rate of infections in Michigan ICUs by 66 percent.

While translational research has traditionally focused on the hard sciences, human behavior is an increasingly important factor driving morbidity and mortality. In order to address these important challenges, we must widen the focus of translational research to include research that specifically addresses decision-making and behavior. Interventions based on this research can help elicit behavioral change in patients and help protect patients from the inevitable fallibility of medical providers. Just as fundamental discoveries in the hard sciences lead to life saving advances, so too can the discoveries of behavioral sciences.

Lauren Groskaufmanis is a graduate student in the school of medicine. Her column, the picture of health, runs on alternate Fridays.

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