Conceptual Framework for RoboDoc: A New Social Robot for Research Assistantship

Conducting a research becomes a challenging task when a large number of scientific data is available and needs to be organized. In addition, research facilities may not be easily accessible due to the limitation in using hi-tech equipment and the resulting expenses. While, there are sophisticated tools for managing research data and assisting the researcher in conducting a research, they are not accessible through a union integrated manner, and sometimes the researcher is overwhelmed with these tools, with additional effort to learn how to work with them. To overcome these challenges, we propose a personalized intelligent assistant as a social robot, called RoboDoc, to assist the researcher in research steps such as idea generation, designing research methodology, and collecting and analyzing research data. We introduce a conceptual framework for RoboDoc to describe its services and design requirements, and at the end we briefly discuss our current efforts in developing RoboDoc.