Proprioceptive and Kinematic Profiles for Customized Human‐ Robot Interaction for People Suffering from Autism (original) (raw)
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Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2015
Our research aims to develop a new personalized social interaction model between a humanoid robot and an individual suffering of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), so as to enhance his/her social and communication skills. In order to define individual's profile, we posit that the individual's reliance to proprioceptive and kinematic visual cues will affect the way an individual suffering of ASD interacts with a social agent. We describe a first experiment that defines each participant's perceptive-cognitive and sensorimotor profile with respect to the integration of visual inputs, thanks to the Sensory Profile questionnaire and an experimental set-up. We succeeded to form 3 groups with significant different behavioural responses inside our subject pool formed by 7 adults and 6 children with ASD. In a second experiment, we presented the Nao robot to all of our participants. We video-analysed their behaviours and compared them to the profiles we defined. In view of our results, this first interaction confirmed our hypothesis: participants with a weak proprioceptive integration and strong visual dependency had more successful interaction than participants with an overreliance on proprioceptive input and hypo-reactivity to visual cues.
2012
The evolution of human-robot interaction (HRI) is now expanding its wings to aid children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in areas of socialization, communication and playful behavior through robot-based intervention. Herein we present our holistic, longstanding goal to contribute to the lives of children with ASD; who suffer a lifelong developmental disability. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on a case study in our pilot experiment where a child with ASD is exposed to the humanoid robot NAO in order to gauge his initial response and behavior in the presence of a robot. NAO robot is the chosen robotic agent as it is a commercially available humanoid with simpler in appearance compared to real humans, thus appears more approachable to children with ASD. The pilot procedures involve the robot executing basic, simple components of interaction through a series of 5 different modules. In this study, the principal results show that the basic HRI carried out by the robot is able to suppress the child's autistic behavior during the child-robot interaction. Also, more eye contact is observed between the child and robot compared to the child with his teacher during regular class session. Relating this to the child's IQ which falls in the moderate category, it is suggested that children with ASD in the same IQ group will be receptive to robot-based intervention even in the first interaction session. Hence, it can be concluded that the humanoid robot NAO has potential to serve as a platform to support and initiate interaction in children with ASD.
2010
Autism here refers to the term Autistic Spectrum Disorders which comprises a range of manifestations of a disorder that can occur to different degrees and in a variety of forms (Jordan, 1999). Autism is a lifelong developmental disability, often accompanied by learning disabilities, that affects the way a person communicates and relates to people around them. The exact cause or causes of autism is/are still unknown. For detailed diagnostic criteria the reader is referred to DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, American Psychiatric Association (1995). For the purpose of this paper we list the main impairments that are characteristic of people with autism, provided by The National Autistic Society (NAS, 2004): a. impaired social interaction-the inability to relate to others in meaningful ways, difficulty in forming social relationships, the inability to understand others' intentions, feelings and mental states. b. impaired social communication-difficulties with verbal and non verbal communication e.g difficulties in understanding gesture and facial expressions, difficulty in understanding metaphors etc. c. impaired imagination-difficulty in the development of play, and having limited range of imaginative activities. In addition, people with autism usually exhibit little reciprocal use of eyecontact and rarely get engaged in interactive games. They show a tendency
Analysis of the use of a robot to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder
Research on Biomedical Engineering, 2016
Introduction: Autism Spectrum Disorder is a set of developmental disorders that imply in poor social skills, lack of interest in activities and interaction with people. Treatments rely on teaching social skills and in such therapies robotics may offer aid. This work is a pilot study, which aims to show the development and usage of a ludic mobile robot for stimulating social skills in ASD children. Methods: A mobile robot with a special costume and a monitor to display multimedia contents was designed to interact with ASD children. A mediator controls the robot's movements in a room prepared for interactive sessions. Sessions are recorded to assess the following social skills: eye gazing, touching the robot and imitating the mediator. The interaction is evaluated using the Goal Attainment Scale and Likert scale. Ten children were evaluated (50% with ASD), using as inclusion criteria children with age 7-8, without use of medication, and without tendency to aggression or stereotyped movements. Results: It was observed that the ASD group touched the robot about twice more in average than the control group (CG). They also looked away and imitated the mediator in a quite similar way as the CG, and showed extra social skills (verbal and non-verbal communication). These results are considered an advance in terms of improvement of social skills in ASD children. Conclusions: Our studies indicate that the robot stimulated social skills in 4/5 of the ASD children, which shows that its concepts are useful to improve socialization and quality of life.
Autism and social robotics: A systematic review
Autism Research, 2015
Social robotics could be a promising method for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) treatment. The aim of this article is to carry out a systematic literature review of the studies on this topic that were published in the last 10 years. We tried to address the following questions: can social robots be a useful tool in autism therapy? We followed the PRISMA guidelines, and the protocol was registered within PROSPERO database (CRD42015016158). We found many positive implications in the use of social robots in therapy as for example: ASD subjects often performed better with a robot partner rather than a human partner; sometimes, ASD patients had, toward robots, behaviors that TD patients had toward human agents; ASDs had a lot of social behaviors toward robots; during robotic sessions, ASDs showed reduced repetitive and stereotyped behaviors and, social robots manage to improve spontaneous language during therapy sessions. Therefore, robots provide therapists and researchers a means to connect with autistic subjects in an easier way, but studies in this area are still insufficient. It is necessary to clarify whether sex, intelligence quotient, and age of participants affect the outcome of therapy and whether any beneficial effects only occur during the robotic session or if they are still observable outside the clinical/experimental context.
Humanoid Robot Enhancing Social and Communication Skills of Autistic Children: Review
Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Development Journal
Autism is a neurological disease that affects people’s social, communicational and mental abilities. This makes it difficult for them to express themselves and integrate seamlessly with other people and society as a whole. With the number of autism cases steadily increasing, researchers and caretakers alike around the world are working on finding a teaching technique to help with the therapy and education of autistic children. Due to the number of resources and expertise that are required for this operation, it has proven to be quite difficult to find such a teaching technique. The results of our literature survey also show that the USA has the most research in this field, followed by England and Spain. The aim of this paper is to study the interaction of autistic children with the humanoid robot NAO. Therefore, we developed different interactive activities and materials for testing the children’s attitude and engagement. After careful observation and experimenting, it was found th...
Robot and Human …, 2005
The general context of the work presented in this paper is assistive robotics with our long-term aim to support children with autism. This paper is part of an investigation into what ways and to what extent a robot can assume the role of a social mediator -encouraging autistic children to interact with the robot, with each other and with co-present adults. The article provides a case study evaluation of segments of trials where four children with autism interacted with a robot as well as with each other. It focuses primarily on the ways in which the autistic children were found to skilfully orientate and reorientate their bodies in a way that was sensitive to the activities of the adult (such as requests and adjustments to the robot), the robot (its position and movement) and another child. Results are presented using an analysis of interaction informed by conversation analytic principles. The analysis showed how the children exhibited interaction skills where the robot served as a salient object mediating joint attention with other children.
Development of Socially Assistive Robots for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
This paper describes the design and implementation of a robotic system for interaction with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The system consists of a robot and supporting infrastructure, including a "smart room". The intent of this work is to explore and study the design of a therapeutic, minimally-restrictive environment that enables free-form human-human and human-robot interaction. Our primary design goals include: 1) using minimal structure with the participants in order to elicit natural behavior; 2) increasing a child's social interactions while utilizing minimal human-operated technology; and 3) facilitating human-robot interaction while requiring the child to wear no more than the minimum needed for effective signal detection.
Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2018
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disorder that requires personalising the treatment to the personal condition, in particular for individuals with Intellectual Disability (ID), which are the majority of those with ASD. In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis of our ongoing research on personalised care for children with ASD and ID. The investigation focuses on integrating a social robot within the standard treatment in which tasks and level of interaction are adapted to the ID level of the individual and follow his progress after the rehabilitation.