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The main objective of the current project, is to perform a preliminary assessment of the potential of SociBot to be included as a co-therapist in psychosocial rehabilitation sessions.The model situation is counseling – a user seeks the help of a professional to cope with undesirable situations by learning new social skills and strategies and reformulation of their personal goals.

The robot assistant SociBot mini will be employed to help assess, communicate, reflect, remind, repeat and mirror personal experiences in order to enhance the process of self-controlled attitude shift – and support the effort of the therapist. Two scenarios will be prepared with SociBot mini playing the role of a cotherapist in a therapeutic session.

At the AALL only the scenarios will be developed and the videotaping of the robot will be performed, without any actual human-robot interaction study taking place. The study of saccadic eye movement and/or EEG during a counselling session with a humanoid robot will be performed at IR-BAS, Bulgaria.

Scientific: A clusterisation of robot behaviours will be proposed and their appropriateness for real life implementation in pedagogical and psychosocial rehabilitation settings will be tested. The clusterisation will be along psychological dimensions, implementable in the respective “social sensors”.

Societal: All knowledge and skills learned will be share with colleagues at IR-BAS. Future collaboration on joint projects or IR-BAS and AALL is also expected. IR-BAS has close connections, via the PR Office of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with central and local media on the recent achievements in robotics with high societal value, www.ir.bas.bg. The institute is very well represented in the social media and will popularize TeRRINet with all available means.