Editor’s note: Jasmine Vo, the author of this story, is a student employee in the University Marketing and Communications department. She is a fourth-year student majoring in communication sciences.
As she coped with the grief of suddenly losing her dad during her undergraduate degree, Alexis E. Block, Dr.sc, longed for a hug from her mom and grandmother. This prompted an important question: Can robots provide emotional support for humans?
Alexis E. Block
For Block, the answer is one day, hopefully. She worked through her master’s and doctoral studies to develop the first human-sized interactive hugging robot with visual and haptic perception, and is now an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Case School of Engineering. Block’s research explores the ways robots and technology can provide empathetic, emotionally intelligent responses and address mental health challenges to enhance human well-being.
Using robotics to emotionally support humans has been a compass for many projects in her lab — the Social and Physical Human-Robot interaction (SaPHaRI) Lab. The SaPHaRI Lab is part of the Human Fusions Institute (HFI), a Case Western Reserve University institute pioneering research in neural engineering and human-technology integration.
The SaPHaRI Lab is developing wearable devices that help people communicate their emotional states and desire for interaction and robots to provide mental health support to astronauts in space, among other innovations.
“HFI provides shared resources and a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary environment that supports the research of labs with a shared mission, like SaPHaRI,” said Mark Mykleby, executive director of HFI.
Building compassionate robots with human-centered design
AstropPsych, a project that the SaPHaRI Lab developed, aims to provide emotional support for astronauts in space. It also has applications on Earth for people experiencing real or perceived barriers to access support.