2025/04/08 by Francisco J. Rodríguez Lera, Lera, Francisco J. Rodríguez, Raquel Fernández Hernández +9
Computer Science · Psychology · #Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Multimodal Machine Learning Applications #Robotics (cs.RO) #Social Robot Interaction and HRI
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.06189
openalex publication_date 2025/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper presents a novel framework for accessible and pedagogically-grounded robot explainability, designed to support human-robot interaction (HRI) with users who have diverse cognitive, communicative, or learning needs. We combine principles from Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Universal Design (UD) with symbolic communication strategies to facilitate the alignment of mental models between humans and robots. Our approach employs Asterics Grid and ARASAAC pictograms as a multimodal, interpretable front-end, integrated with a lightweight HTTP-to-ROS 2 bridge that enables real-time interaction and explanation triggering. We emphasize that explainability is not a one-way function but a bidirectional process, where human understanding and robot transparency must co-evolve. We further argue that in educational or assistive contexts, the role of a human mediator (e.g., a teacher) may be essential to support shared understanding. We validate our framework with examples of multimodal explanation boards and discuss how it can be extended to different scenarios in education, assistive robotics, and inclusive AI.