Examines various speech technologies deployed in healthcare service robots to maximize the robot's ability to interpret user input.Demonstrates how robot anthropomorphic features and etiquette in behavior promotes user-positive emotions, acceptance of robots, and compliance with robot requests.Analyzes how multimodal medical-service robots and other cyber-physical systems can reduce mistakes and mishaps in the operating room.Evaluates various input methods for improving acceptance of robots in the older adult population.Presents case studies of cognitively and socially engaging robots in the long-term care setting for helping older adults with activities of daily living and in the pediatric setting for helping children with autism spectrum conditions and metabolic disorders.

Speech and Automata in Health Care forges new ground by closely analyzing how three separate disciplines - speech technology, robotics, and medical/surgical/assistive care - intersect with one another, resulting in an innovative way of diagnosing and treating both juvenile and adult illnesses and conditions. This includes the use of speech-enabled robotics to help the elderly population cope with common problems associated with aging caused by the diminution in their sensory, auditory and motor capabilities. By examining the emerging nexus of speech, automata, and health care, the authors demonstrate the exciting potential of automata, both speech-driven and multimodal, to affect the healthcare delivery system so that it better meets the needs of the populations it serves. This book provides both empirical research findings and incisive literature reviews that demonstrate some of the more novel uses of speech-enabled and multimodal automata in the operating room, hospital ward, long-term care facility, and in the home. Studies backed by major universities, research institutes, and by EU-funded collaborative projects are debuted in this volume.

This volume provides a wealth of timely material for industrial engineers, speech scientists, computational linguists, and for signal processing and intelligent systems design experts.

Topics include:

Spoken Interaction with Healthcare RobotsService Robot Feature Effects on Patient Acceptance/Emotional ResponseDesigning Embodied and Virtual Agents for the Operating RoomThe Emerging Role of Robotics for Personal Health Management in the Older-Adult PopulationWhy Input Methods for Robots that Serve the Older Adult Are Critical for UsabilitySocially and Cognitively Engaging Robots in the Long-Term Care SettingVoice-Enabled Assistive Robots for Managing Autism Spectrum ConditionsASR and TTS for Voice-Controlled Robot Interactions in Treating Children with Metabolic Disorders

Amy Neustein, Fort Lee, NJ.

I. Robots and Healthcare

1. The Use of Robots in the Healthcare Delivery System: How Changing Demographics Have Created a Need for Automata

2. How to Find the Right Robot to Assist Doctors, Surgeons and Healthcare Workers?

II: Empirical Studies of Robotic Health Assistants at High-Level Facilities

3. Comparing the Performance of Voice-only Robotic Nurses with Multimodal Embodied Agents

4. Overcoming Obstacles to the Integration of Robotic Care: A First-Hand Experience at a High Level Health Facility that Adopted RP-VITA to Perform Clinical Assessments of Critically Ill Patients

5. Introducing Gestonurse to the Operating Theater: Measuring its Effects on Surgical Communication Errors when Performing Endoscopic Procedures

II. Robotic Agents and Medical Triage in Military Combat Zones

6. The Effect of Military Medical Robots on Critical Care Management in the Military

7. Medical Triage and Robotic Agents: A Case Study of Speech-Driven Automata for Handling Military Casualties

8. Using Multimodal Robots in the Military: Adapting to Noisy Environments Where Speech Signals Are Degraded

III. Automata and the Elderly

9. Keeping the Elderly Independent: The Effect of Voice-Controlled Robots on Eldercare

10. Using Speech and Automata to Perform Clinical Assessment of Homebound Elderly

11. A Case Study of Speech-Enabled Robots and their Comforting Early-Stage Dementia Patients

IV. Conclusion