From Child-Robot Interaction to Child-Robot-Therapist Interaction: A Case Study in Autism

Abstract

Abstract. Troubles in social communication as well as deficits in the cognitive treatment of emotions are supposed to be a fundamental part of autism. We present a case study based on multimodal interaction between a mobile robot and a child with autism in spontaneous, free game play. This case study tells us that the robot mediates the interaction between the autistic child and therapist once the robot-child interaction has been established. In addition, the child uses the robot as a mediator to express positive emotion playing with the therapist. It is thought that the three-pronged interaction i.e., child-robot-therapist could better facilitate the transfer of social and emotional abilities to real life settings. Robot therapy has a high potential to improve the condition of brain activity in autistic children.

Assistive Robots for the Social Management of Health: A Framework for Robot Design and Human–Robot Interaction Research

“…Giannopulu and Pradel [26] have documented a case of a child with autism using a robot as a mediator for his interaction with a therapist in a free play scenario. The robot had a very simple design: a schematic facelike cover made of geometric shapes (circles for eyes and mouth, and triangle for nose) on top of a remotecontrolled locomotion hardware, able to move forward, move back and swivel.…”

“…HRI studies of robots intervening in human-human interactions vary widely in their scope, and are scattered across domains of application, using very different robot designs in a variety of context. Some are simply case studies (e.g., [26]), others engage larger participant samples (e.g., [27]), some studies investigate the effects of the robot in the context of specific tasks (e.g., [20]), some leave the interaction free and open to what participants want to make of it, constrained just by the robots capabilities (e.g., [28]). Some of the robots used are designed with clinical applications in mind, such as assisting children with autism (e.g., [29]) or providing couples therapy (e.g., [30]), but many of them are intended for general use, for purposes such as promoting inter-generational interactions (e.g., [31]).…”

Social Robotic Systems in Autism Therapy: Survey and Design Considerations

“…Liu et al [32] have developed a physiology-based affect-inference mechanism for robot-assisted intervention where the robot can detect the affective states of a child with ASD. In other evaluations by [24], [33] and [34], videos were recorded during the child-robot interactions, and the recordings were analysed at a later date for qualitative data. In most of the studies of robots in autism therapy, the amount of qualitative data outweighs the quantitative data; therefore researchers need to focus more on methods for collecting quantitative data in order to obtain substantial support for validity of research.…”

Emergent emotional and verbal strategies in autism are based on multimodal interactions with toy robots in free spontaneous game play

“…As in real human interaction, the child and the robot altered their responses. All movements were constant and standardized (see also [17], [18]). …”

“…Using a multimodal cogmtlve nonverbal approach (visual, tactile, manipulation, posture) [17] which was also related to an emotional one [18], we have shown that a mobile toy robot "GIPY I" could be used as a neural mediator to bring neurocognitive improvements to autistic children. The multimodal cognitive interactions could be thought of as the building block from which expressive language could emerge.…”