AIDA: A Social Co-Robot to Uplift Workers with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

As an alternative to social co-robots, or collaborative robots, displacing workers in the workforce, social robots may, in the future, be used to augment workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and improve their work environments. We are developing AIDA, a co-robot to uplift and augment the abilities of workers who have IDD and work in a light manufacturing facility. This paper presents the design process for discovering the workers' needs and a description of our works-in-progress prototype social co-robot, AIDA, an artificially intelligent disability aide designed to function safely and securely alongside these workers.