The Anty project is an interdisciplinary research project aiming to develop a robotic friend for hospitalized children called Probo. The ANTY project will be used to accomplish three important goals concerning different areas of interest. The first and main goal is to develop and build the robot to enlighten the children's stay in the hospital. A second goal is to use the robot as a multidisciplinary research platform for technical, medical, social and psychological studies. The third goal is to use the project to motivate students and to stimulate new technological innovation.
A hospitalization is a serious physical and mental occurrence. It brings children in some situations which are completely different from home. In hospital, children's experiences are more limited due to the closed and protective environment. These situations and limitations lead to many difficulties and special needs, which the Anty project will try to improve by creating a special friend visiting the children. Robot Probo will be used as a télé-interface to interact with the children on three different levels:
- Entertainment
- Communication
- Medical treatments
Project has started with the development and construction of a first prototype, which provides technical challenges in different research areas. The prototype will support the further growth of the project. Alongside the technical research possibilities the prototype will be used to examine the opportunities for using ANTY in medical, social and psychological research. These researches will provide relevant feedback to optimize the prototype towards a useful "social" robot.
Concerning the research in the medical area, the ANTY Project wants to explore the Robot Assisted Therapy possibilities. Regarding the research in social and psychological areas, they want to focus on child-robot interaction and emotional communication.
The robot will serve as a platform for small projects, which will be outsourced to local high schools or universities. In those projects the students can work on a specific element of the project, knowing that their work is part of a bigger concept. In this way the project is a great approach to motivate students and to stimulate new technological innovation.
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