Modular Robotic System as Multisensory Room in Children’s Hospital

We developed a system composed of different modular robotic devices, which can be used e.g. as a multi-sensory room in hospital settings. The system composed of the modular robotic devices engage the user in physical activities, and should motivate to perform physical activities by providing immediate feedback based upon physical interaction with the system. The modularity, ease of use and the functionality of the devices such as modular robotic tiles and cubic I-BLOCKS suit well into these kinds of scenarios, because they can provide feedback in terms of light, vibration, sound and possibly many other ways, since the devices are fairly generic, which means that they can be augmented with other sensors or actuators. It is therefore possible to create applications with different stimuli and to dynamically change parameters to provide immediate feedback to the users. A main finding of the tests conducted here at a children’s hospital, is that it was found to be very important to create feedback that was easily recognised by the users, and it was found that the interaction was boring if the feedback was too implicit (subtle) and not well understood by the user. Instead, users appreciated explicit immediate feedback very much because it was obvious and understandable, and did not require any a priori knowledge of the application.