Augmenting Mobile App with NAO Robot for Autism Education

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the possibility of combining humanoid robots, particularly the NAO robot, with a mobile application to enhance the educational experiences of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The NAO robot, interfaced with a mobile app, serves as a socially assistive robotic (SAR) tool in the classroom. The study involved two groups of children aged three to six years old, exhibiting mild to moderate ASD symptoms. While the experimental group interacted with the NAO robot, the control group followed the standard curriculum. Initial findings showed that students in the experimental group exhibited higher levels of engagement and eye contact. However, certain limitations were identified, including the NAO robot’s limited capacity for concurrent interactions, language difficulties, battery life, and internet access. Despite these limitations, the study highlights the potential of robots and AI in addressing the particular educational requirements of children with ASD. Future research should focus on overcoming these obstacles to maximize the advantages of this technology in ASD education.

Assisted Robots in Therapies for Children with Autism in Early Childhood

“…NAO is balanced by four pressure sensors that control the corresponding centre of pressure on each foot. It has four speakers and a speech recognition and analysis system, which allow it to listen, speak, and perform spatial acoustic positioning, and two high-definition CMOS cameras that enable forward vision; such powerful hardware endows NAO with a high degree of artificial intelligence [ 58 ].…”

“…Throughout this review, research was found with all the types of robots mentioned ( Figure 2 ). Then, it was observed that, with humanoid robots themselves, the most widely used was NAO, which is used in approximately 30% of the research on social robots for autistic children [ 58 ]. Of the studies reviewed for this paper, the NAO robot was used in 44.44% of the cases.…”