Technology UK CU- The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has opened up multiple possibilities and further opened doors for new research techniques, however caution has also been raised by many on the possibility of the invasion of privacy and loss of jobs.
A University of Cambridge group of roboticists, computer scientists and psychiatrists joined hands to undertake a study involving 28 children between the ages of eight and 13, and had a child-sized humanoid (machine with human features) robot administer a series of standard psychological questionnaires to analyze the mental wellbeing of the individual participants.
The children were observed to be more open to the robot than they would with an actual person or an on-line questionnaire which was a 1st in the use of robots to analyze the mental health of children.
The research team stated that robots could be a great option to add to conventional studies on mental health, however the team stressed that there was no intention to replace mental health professionals. The study is set to be presented at the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) in Naples, Italy.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many children being forced to attend classes on-line and to be isolated from their class mates which has had severe phycological impact on many kids, but anxiety and depression had also been issues even before the pandemic the researchers had pointed out.
The Affective Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory in Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology is headed by Professor Hatice Gunes who has been researching how socially-assistive robots impacted mental health of adults but recently expanded her research on its possibilities for children.
“After I became a mother, I was much more interested in how children express themselves as they grow, and how that might overlap with my work in robotics,” says Gunes.
