Short Course

Unmanned Aircraft Systems, September 5, 2013

DU²SRI organizes the following short course:

Short Course: Unmanned Aircraft Systems: A Comprehensive Overview

Date:             Thursday, September 5, 2013; 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM

Location:        Front Range Airport, Watkins, CO

Download Short Course Agenda

Engineering school uses robot to help kids with autism disorder

Academics & Research
DU Today
July 15, 2013
By: Tamara Chapman

For children growing up with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), interacting successfully with others often presents enormous challenges.

When it's customary to make eye contact, children with ASD often gaze elsewhere. When a smile would be appropriate, they may deliver a scowl. And when a playmate communicates frustration via a facial expression, autistic children often don't recognize the signal, responding with behavior that makes matters worse.

As a result, children with ASD often struggle to make friends or thrive in any setting that requires people skills.

Enter NAO, a personable robot with a mission. He's helping an interdisciplinary faculty-student research team, based out of DU's Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, conduct a pilot study exploring whether humanoid robots can improve social and communication skills in children with ASD.

"He can walk, talk and dance," says Mohammad Mahoor, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. The 23-inch-tall NAO, made by Aldebaran Robotics of France, can also direct autistic children in a host of activities designed to improve their recognition of facial expressions and to help them direct their gaze appropriately. When the kids succeed, NAO can even enlist them in a celebratory high-five.

The robot project is one of several research initiatives led by Mahoor, an expert in visual pattern recognition, social robot design and bioengineering. With this project, he aims to build on studies pointing to the therapeutic potential of robots for the ASD population. He hopes to enlist up to 50 children with high-functioning autism in his two-year study, scheduled to conclude in another year if funding permits.

"You may ask, why a robot? Why not a human?" Mahoor says of his research premise. "Humans are very overwhelming for kids with autism."

Toys and technology, on the other hand, are less intimidating. "A lot of kids on the spectrum like mechanical things," says Sophia Silver, a junior psychology major intent on a career in child psychology. Silver brings her insight into autistic children to the research team. She also recruits study participants, schedules their visits and talks with parents while their children are playing with NAO.

To date, Mahoor's study has enlisted 24 participants, ages 7 to 17, who, over the course of six months, come to a University experiment room every two weeks for 30-minute sessions with NAO. Equipped with four microphones and two cameras, NAO records lots of data about each participant — everything from the duration and frequency of their direct gazes to the range of their facial expressions.

"Why are these important?" Mahoor asks. "These are the bases of human sociability."

NAO is programmed, scripted and operated by members of the DU research team. Huanghao Feng, a graduate student in computer engineering, has been with the project from the beginning. Initially, he joined the team to learn more about the newfangled NAO, but the project has also taught him a lot about working with autistic children. When they don't respond to the robot, or when their attention wavers, he repeats the robot's requests or helps them stay on task.

One of the activities enlists a handful of small beanbags, each of them sporting a photo of a person demonstrating an expression — happiness, perhaps, or sadness or anger. The child is asked to find, and show NAO, the toy with the angry face. This exercise helps participants identify the emotions attached to facial expressions—a skill, Silver says, that often eludes children with ASD.

"If kids can't identify that another child is angry, they'll get in more fights. They'll have trouble making friends," she says.

Other exercises, Mahoor notes, work on what is known as joint attention—in other words, shared focus on an object. NAO may, for example, ask the child to follow his gaze to, say, a line of boxes. "I have kids who are able to follow what NAO asks them to do. 'Look at that object or pick up that object.' Then NAO gives them a hug or a candy, a reward," he explains.

These moments of triumph are captured on NAO's cameras. "After the sessions," Feng says, "I go back to the lab and process all the data."

The cameras capture some interesting information, such as the duration of direct gazes and the frequency of gaze shifts. Preliminary findings suggest that NAO is helping some of the children maintain a direct gaze for longer periods.

Mahoor and the research team are hoping to add a second robot, Zeno, into the mix. Made by Hanson Robokind of Dallas, Zeno can display a range of facial expressions and instruct participants in mimicking them. And, Feng adds, like NAO, he can record those expressions, allowing the research team to gauge the social development of study participants.

Robots bring another advantage to a research team intent on repeating exercises and measuring data over time, Mahoor says. Robot interactions can be conducted precisely the same way again and again. That simply wouldn't be possible with a human, who might introduce a new variable into a game or conversation.

It's too soon to know just how effective robots can be. Not every child engages with them, but Feng and Silver have witnessed significant progress in several children.

Take the case of one nonverbal little boy. "At the beginning," Feng says, "he was completely scared of the robot. But after several sessions, he hugged the robot and kissed the robot. He even came up and hugged me."

Silver takes equal pleasure in such developments. "To see them excited about something is fun," she says. "And it is really liberating for their parents as well."

Watch NAO in action here!

For more information visit: Dr. Mohammad Mahoor's Research Website  

Trio of gifts adds up to $40M for University of Denver

May 20, 2013, 1:07pm MDT UPDATED: May 20, 2013, 2:25pm MDT

By : L. Wayne Hicks
Social Media Engagement Officer / Digital Producer-
Denver Business Journal

Three donors have given the University of Denver a combined $40 million, with $27 million coming from former chancellor Daniel Ritchie.

The donations will allow DU to add an engineering and computer science building, which will house a new interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative. The new building also will be home to the new Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging.

Ritchie's gift is the largest in the history of the university, and is in the form of a working avocado ranch he owns in Montecito, Calif. DU's chancellor from 1989 to 2005 and chairman of the board of trustees from 2007 to 2009, Ritchie transferred ownership of the ranch to the university.

In honor of Ritchie's father, the new building will be called the Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science. The 110,000-square-foot building will be between the Newman Center for the Performing Arts and Olin Hall, on the south end of the campus.

The other donors to fund the new project are the estate of William Peterson, who graduated DU in 1969 with a degree in engineering; and Betty Knoebel, widow of Ferdinand "Fritz" Knoebel. DU's College of Business already is home to the Knoebel School of Hospitality Management.

The Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging will take up a floor in the new building.

For the original article, please visit  Denver Business Journal.

L. Wayne Hicks is Social Media Engagement Officer / Digital Producer of the Denver Business Journal, writes for the "Cultural Attache" blog, and compiles the daily "DBJ Morning Call" email. Phone: 303-803-9221.

University Announces Gifts To Fund New Engineering Building And STEM Initiative

By: Greg Glasgow
May 20, 2013
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An architect's model shows the new Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science between Olin Hall and the Newman Center for the Performing Arts.

Photo by: Wayne Armstrong, University of Denver

The largest financial gift in University of Denver history will go toward the construction of a new campus home for Engineering and Computer Science.

Chancellor Emeritus Daniel Ritchie has donated more than $27 million to build the Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, which will be named for his father. The 110,000-square-foot building on the south side of campus also will house the new Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging. It is slated to be completed in early 2015.
"We have wonderful faculty; we have wonderful students; what we don't have is wonderful facilities. That's the piece that's missing," Daniel Ritchie said at a May 20 press conference to announce the new building. "This will make a huge difference for the University, for the faculty and for our students."

The new building is part of a new interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative at the University that will address societal needs of the 21st century and prepare globally competitive graduates for business and entrepreneurship. The Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science will bring together multiple complementary STEM activities and research already taking place on campus.

"These are the disciplines that are driving the growth of the worldwide economy," Chancellor Robert Coombe said at the press conference. "Today, with the U.S. economy rebounding, many of the jobs that are being created are in these disciplines, and we find that this is driving interest among students and among students yet to come to the University of Denver. There is an enormous wave in interest in STEM disciplines, and that wave is washing ashore at the University of Denver with considerable vigor."
Additional funding for the new engineering building comes from Betty Knoebel, widow of Denver food-service pioneer Ferdinand "Fritz" Knoebel, and the late Bill Petersen (BSEE '69), an alumnus of the DU School of Engineering. The gifts will allow the University to increase student scholarships, faculty support, industry partnerships and experiential learning programs.

According to Chancellor Coombe, the interdisciplinary focus will allow the University to dramatically expand its current engineering and computer science programs, with a vision of further developing mechatronics, bioengineering and software engineering curricula. Added capacity will allow the school to increase its faculty by more than 30 percent and enhance particular areas of scholarship and instruction. Coombe added that the initiative also responds to the shifting interests of college-bound graduates who are increasingly interested in sciences, math and engineering.

"The University of Denver will be on the cutting edge of developing a new breed of STEM graduates ready for the complex technological needs of the future," Coombe said. "Our students will create real-life solutions to real-life problems with an integrated approach to learning."...Read more on DU TODAY