The potential of robotics for the development and wellbeing of children with disabilities as we see it

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Rapid technological development has been opening new possibilities for children with disabilities. In particular, robots can enable and create new opportunities in therapy, rehabilitation, education, or leisure. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is to share experiences, challenges and learned lessons by the authors, all of them with experience conducting research in the field of robotics for children with disabilities, and to propose future directions for research and development. METHODS: The article is the result of several consensus meetings to establish future research priorities in this field. RESULTS: Robots have a huge potential to support children with disabilities: they can play the role of a play buddy, of a mediator when interacting with other children or adults, they can promote social interaction, and transfer children from the role of a spectator of the surrounding world to the role of an active participant. To fulfill their potential, robots have to be “smart”, stable and reliable, easy to use and program, and give the just-right amount of support adapted to the needs of the child. Interdisciplinary collaboration combined with user centered design is necessary to make robotic applications successful. Furthermore, real-life contexts to test and implement robotic interventions are essential to refine them according to real needs. CONCLUSIONS: This article outlines a research agenda for the future of robotics in childcare and supports the establishment of R4C – Robots for Children, a network of experts aimed at sharing ideas, promoting innovative research, and developing good practices on the use of robots for children with disabilities.

Social robotics in music education: A systematic review

“…Similarly, it seems advisable to undertake experiences focused on the whole educational community with the aim of acquiring knowledge and experimenting from a specific school project, assigning robots the status of members of that same community, as reported by Arocena et al (2022), Lau et al (2020), López-Belmonte et al (2021, and Van den Heuvel et al (2022). Benefits can also be obtained from collaborating with parents and other people actively involved in students' life (Gasteiger et al, 2021).…”

“…Although the use of robotics in education can be described as an innovation, an extensive research base has already been generated around it (Lau et al, 2020;López-Belmonte et al, 2021;Arocena et al, 2022;Van den Heuvel et al, 2022). It is normal to think of experiences where students learn to design robots, thus developing their computational thinking (Acevedo-Borrega et al, 2022;Bati, 2022).…”

Making humanoid robots teaching assistants by using natural language processing (NLP) cloud-based services

“…The humanoid robots (HRs) have the biggest potential to support the special educational needs among the used assistive technologies in Special Education. They can play different roles: a play buddy, a mediator for interacting with other children or adults, a promoter of social interaction, an interest catcher in the teaching session [1]. The popular HRs used in the Special Education are described in [2].…”

A scoping review of artificial intelligence-based robot therapy for children with disabilities

“…These tools can be customized to cater to the distinctive requirements and capabilities of each child, rendering them genuinely exceptional. In the contemporary digital landscape, AI applications have demonstrated profound potential in bolstering therapeutic support for children with special needs [5]. AI has emerged as a potent instrument to elevate therapy for these children, with the rapid progress of AI presenting fresh avenues to surmount the challenges they face.…”