Sharifa Alghowinem

Research Scientist
  • Personal Robots

Social robots are a great medium for coaching intervention to maintain a healthy physical and mental wellbeing of their owners. Several projects are currently running in this context including a social robot for medical adherence intervention and emotional wellness intervention (e.g. stress, loneliness).  For the medical adherence intervention, the social robot monitors pill bottle usage to give real-time feedback on medication intake. For example, if a patient was reminded by the robot to take a medication, then they picked the wrong bottle, the robot will notify them to pick the correct one. On the other hand, in emotional wellness projects, the social robot is used to track and improve the user's emotions. For example, when the robot detects that the owner had a low mood, it could coach them in some positive psychology conversations that might lead to enhancing their mood.

My previous work was on Affective computing, where I worked on modeling Artificial Intelligent algorithms to diagnose depression, detect deception, and recognize human behavior during emotional expressions.

With PRG, I work on using these techniques for the intervention side of the robot interaction. I worked on several projects including Wellness, Parent-child interaction, medication adherence, depression interventions using the robot.