Sharifa Alghowinem, a analysis scientist within the Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group, poses with Jibo, a pleasant robotic companion developed by Professor Cynthia Breazeal. Credits: Gretchen Ertl
By Dorothy Hanna | Department of Mechanical Engineering
“As a child, I wished for a robot that would explain others’ emotions to me” says Sharifa Alghowinem, a analysis scientist within the Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group (PRG). Growing up in Saudi Arabia, Alghowinem says she dreamed of coming to MIT sooner or later to develop Arabic-based applied sciences, and of making a robotic that would assist herself and others navigate a fancy world.
In her adolescence, Alghowinem confronted difficulties with understanding social cues and by no means scored nicely on standardized assessments, however her goals carried her by. She earned an undergraduate diploma in computing earlier than leaving residence to pursue graduate schooling in Australia. At the Australian National University, she found affective computing for the primary time and commenced working to assist AI detect human feelings and moods, but it surely wasn’t till she got here to MIT as a postdoc with the Ibn Khaldun Fellowship for Saudi Arabian Women, which is housed within the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, that she was lastly in a position to work on a expertise with the potential to clarify others’ feelings in English and Arabic. Today, she says her work is so enjoyable that she calls the lab “my playground.”
Alghowinem can’t say no to an thrilling mission. She discovered one with nice potential to make robots extra useful to folks by working with Jibo, a pleasant robotic companion developed by the founding father of the Personal Robots Group (PRG) and the social robotic startup Jibo Inc., MIT Professor and Dean for Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal. Breazeal’s analysis explores the potential for companion robots to go far past assistants who obey transactional instructions, like requests for the each day climate, including gadgets to purchasing lists, or controlling lighting. At the MIT Media Lab, the PRG staff designs Jibo to make him an insightful coach and companion to advance social robotics applied sciences and analysis. Visitors to the MIT Museum can expertise Jibo’s charming persona.
Alghowinem’s analysis has targeted on psychological well being care and schooling, typically working with different graduate college students and Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program college students within the group. In one examine, Jibo coached younger and older adults through constructive psychology. He tailored his interventions based mostly on the verbal and non-verbal responses he noticed within the contributors. For instance, Jibo takes within the verbal content material of a participant’s speech and combines it with non-verbal data like extended pauses and self-hugs. If he concludes that deep feelings have been disclosed, Jibo responds with empathy. When the participant doesn’t disclose, Jibo asks a delicate observe up query like, “Can you tell me more?”
Another mission studied how a robotic can successfully assist high-quality dad or mum and baby interactions whereas studying a storybook collectively. Multiple PRG research work collectively to study what forms of knowledge are wanted for a robotic to grasp folks’s social and emotional states.
Research Scientist Sharifa Alghowinem (left) and visiting college students Deim Alfozan and Tasneem Burghleh from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan University, work together with Jibo. Credits: Gretchen Ertl
“I would like to see Jibo become a companion for the whole household,” says Alghowinem. Jibo can tackle totally different roles with totally different relations similar to a companion, reminding elders to take medicine, or as a playmate for kids. Alghowinem is particularly motivated by the distinctive function Jibo may play in emotional wellness, and enjoying a preventative function in melancholy and even suicide. Integrating Jibo into each day life supplies the chance for Jibo to detect rising considerations and intervene, appearing as a confidential useful resource or psychological well being coach.
Alghowinem can also be captivated with educating and mentoring others, and never solely through robots. She makes certain to satisfy individually with the scholars she mentors each week and he or she was instrumental earlier this yr in bringing two visiting undergraduate college students from Prince Sultan University in Saudi Arabia. Mindful of their social-emotional expertise, she labored exhausting to create the chance for the 2 college students, collectively, to go to MIT so they might assist one another. One of the visiting college students, Tasneem Burghleh, says she was curious to satisfy the one that went out of her approach to make alternatives for strangers and found in her an “endless passion that makes her want to pass it on and share it with everyone else.”
Next, Alghowinem is working to create alternatives for kids who’re refugees from Syria. Still within the fundraising stage, the plan is to equip social robots to show the kids English language and social-emotional abilities and supply actions to protect cultural heritage and Arabic skills.
“We’ve laid the groundwork by making sure Jibo can speak Arabic as well as several other languages,” says Alghowinem. “Now I hope we can learn how to make Jibo really useful to kids like me who need some support as they learn how to interact with the world around them.”
MIT News