Paper ID: 2210.09753

A Socially Assistive Robot using Automated Planning in a Paediatric Clinical Setting

Alan Lindsay, Andres Ramirez-Duque, Ronald P. A. Petrick, Mary Ellen Foster

We present an ongoing project that aims to develop a social robot to help children cope with painful and distressing medical procedures in a clinical setting. Our approach uses automated planning as a core component for action selection in order to generate plans that include physical, sensory, and social actions for the robot to use when interacting with humans. A key capability of our system is that the robot's behaviour adapts based on the affective state of the child patient. The robot must operate in a challenging physical and social environment where appropriate and safe interaction with children, parents/caregivers, and healthcare professionals is crucial. In this paper, we present our system, examine some of the key challenges of the scenario, and describe how they are addressed by our system.

Submitted: Oct 18, 2022