A Systematic Literature Review of Experiments in Socially Assistive Robotics using Humanoid Robots

Abstract: We perform a Systematic Literature Review to discover how Humanoid robots are being applied in Socially Assistive Robotics experiments. Our search returned 24 papers, from which 16 were included for closer analysis. To do this analysis we used a conceptual framework inspired by Behavior-based Robotics. We were interested in finding out which robot was used (most use the robot NAO), what the goals of the application were (teaching, assisting, playing, instructing), how the robot was controlled (manually in most of the experiments), what kind of behaviors the robot exhibited (reacting to touch, pointing at body parts, singing a song, dancing, among others), what kind of actuators the robot used (always motors, sometimes speakers, hardly ever any other type of actuator) and what kind of sensors the robot used (in many studies the robot did not use any sensors at all, in others the robot frequently used camera and/or microphone). The results of this study can be used for designing software frameworks targeting Humanoid Socially Assistive Robotics, especially in the context of Software Product Line Engineering projects.