Dialogue Design for a Robot-Based Face-Mirroring Game to Engage Autistic Children with Emotional Expressions

We present design strategies for Human Robot Interaction for school-aged autistic children with limited receptive language. Applying these strategies to the DE-ENIGMA project (large EU project addressing emotion recognition in autistic children) supported development of a new activity for in facial expression imitation whereby the robot imitates the child’s face to encourage the child to notice facial expressions in a play-based game. A usability case study with 15 typically-developing children aged 4–6 at an English-language school in the Netherlands was performed to observe the feasibility of the setup and make design revisions before exposing the robot to autistic children

Proprioceptive and Kinematic Profiles for Customized Human‐ Robot Interaction for People Suffering from Autism

In this chapter, we presented a method to define individual profiles in order to develop a new personalized robot‐based social interaction for individual with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) with the hypothesis that hyporeactivity to visual motion and an overreliance on proprioceptive information would be linked to difficulties in integrating social cues and in engaging in successful interactions. We succeed to form three groups among our 19 participants (children, teenagers, and adults with ASD), describing each participant\u27s response to visual and proprioceptive inputs. We conducted a first experiment to present the robot Nao as a social companion and to avoid fear or stress toward the robot in future experiment. No direct link between the behavior of the participants toward the robot and their proprioceptive and visual profiles was observed. Still, we found encouraging results going in the direction of our hypothesis. In addition, almost all of our participants showed great interest to Nao. Defining such individual profiles prior to social interactions with a robot could provide promising strategies for designing successful and adapted human‐robot interaction (HRI) for individuals with ASD

Head Impact Severity Measures for Small Social Robots Thrown During Meltdown in Autism

Social robots have gained a lot of attention recently as they have been reported to be effective in supporting therapeutic services for children with autism. However, children with autism may exhibit a multitude of challenging behaviors that could be harmful to themselves and to others around them. Furthermore, social robots are meant to be companions and to elicit certain social behaviors. Hence, the presence of a social robot during the occurrence of challenging behaviors might increase any potential harm. In this paper, we identified harmful scenarios that might emanate between a child and a social robot due to the manifestation of challenging behaviors. We then quantified the harm levels based on severity indices for one of the challenging behaviors (i.e. throwing of objects). Our results showed that the overall harm levels based on the selected severity indices are relatively low compared to their respective thresholds. However, our investigation of harm due to throwing of a small social robot to the head revealed that it could potentially cause tissue injuries, subconcussive or even concussive events in extreme cases. The existence of such behaviors must be accounted for and considered when developing interactive social robots to be deployed for children with autism.The work is supported by a research grant from Qatar University under the grant No. QUST-1-CENG-2018-7Scopu

Development of humanoid robot Aldebaran NAO's behaviour logic for soccer software

Aldebaran Roboticsi arendatud NAO humanoidrobotit kasutatakse jalgpallurina RoboCup võistlusel Standard Platform League, kus kõik robotid on sama riistvaraga ja erinevad ainult tarkvara poolest. RoboCup võistluse eesmärk on populariseerida robootikat ja intellektitehnikat. Käesoleva bakalaureusetöö eesmärk oli arendada välja RoboCup SPL 2014. aastal toimuva võistluse nõuetele vastav jalgpallitarkvara käitumisloogika, mis põhineb Texase Ülikooli võistkonna UT Austin Villa 2012. aastal avalikustatud koodil. Töö käigus uuriti Austin Villa koodi ja teiste meeskondade lahendusi, sooritati testid roboti vastupidavuse ja objektituvastuse piiride teada saamiseks ning loodi 2014. aasta võistluse reeglitele vastav käitumisstrateegia, mida on robotitel kasulik kasutada siis, kui robotitevaheline ühendus on katkenud. Loodud strateegias on robotid jagatud tsoonidesse ning kui pall on roboti tsoonis, siis lüüakse see vastase värava suunas. Kui pall ei ole mängija tsoonis, siis liigub ta vastavalt palli asukohale kindlaks määratud staatilistesse punktidesse väljakul. Töö valmis koostöös Philosopheri meeskonnaga, kes osaleb juulis 2014 Brasiilias toimuval RoboCup võistlusel. Vastavalt võistkonna eesmärkidele propageeriti robootikat Eestis ning sooritati demonstratsioone Robotexil 2013, FIRST® LEGO® League Eesti ja Läti poolfinaalis 2013 ja RoboMiku Lahingus 2014. Töö lõpus pakuti välja lahenduse idee, kuidas loodud individuaalstrateegiat muuta meeskondlikuks strateegiaks

Intervención comunicativa en población con síndrome Down y autismo a través de comunicación aumentativa y alternativa y tecnologías de comunicación

INTRODUCCIÓN: El presente artículo dará a conocer un análisis de hallazgos científicos relacionados con los procesos de intervención en el ámbito Fonoaudiológico para el desarrollo de habilidades comunicativas en población con alteraciones en la comunicación secundario al trastorno generalizado del desarrollo y población con Trisomía 21, a través de una recopilación de las evidencias científicas que soporten la utilización de diferentes estrategias que involucren la comunicación aumentativa y alternativa.METODOS: El presente trabajo fue hecho bajo la metodología PRISMA. RESULTADOS: Según la búsqueda de información, esta se realizó en bases primarias como PubMed, Scielo, Science Direct, y Redalyc, y en bases secundarias como Google Académico y sitios web. Durante la fase de identificación se logró encontrar un total de 14.680 artículos relacionados para síndrome de Down y 24.230 artículos relacionados para autismo; llegando a la fase final obteniendo un total de artículos incluidos, 20 para síndrome de Down y 45 para Autismo.ANÁLISIS Y DISCUSIÓN: Con el uso de los métodos de intervención en comunicación se pretende potenciar hábitos de autonomía, reconocimiento de emociones, mejorar la comunicación verbal y no verbal, desarrollar habilidades sociales y mejora de la ubicación temporo-espacial

Safe and Adaptive Social Robots for Children with Autism

Social robots are being considered to be a part of the therapy for children with autism due to the reported efficacy such technology in improving the outcomes. How ever, children diagnosed with autism exhibit challenging behaviors that could cause harm to themselves and to others around them. Throwing, hitting, kicking, and self harming are some examples of the challenging behaviors that were reported to occur among this population. The occurrence of such behaviors during the presence of a social robot could raise some safety concerns. For this reason, this research attempts toidentify the potential for harm due to the diffusion of social robots and investigate means to mitigate them. Considering the advancement in technology and the progress made in many computer science disciplines are making small and adaptable social robots a foreseeable possibility, the studies presented here focus on small robotic form factors.The first study quantities the potential harm to the head due to one of the identi?ed risky scenarios that might occur between a child and a social robot. The results re leaved that the overall harm levels based on the selected severity indices are relatively low compared to their respective thresholds. However, the investigation of harm due to throwing of a small social robot to the head revealed that it could potentially causet issue injuries, sub-concussive or even concussive events in extreme cases. The second two studies are aimed to make small robots safer by optimizing their design. Hence,studies are conducted investigating how robot design can be made safer by investigating different design factors. The study investigated the in?uence of the mass and shape on the linear acceleration of a developed dummy head. The results revealed that the two design factors considered (i.e. mass and shape) affected the resultant response. The second study investigated the in offence three different soft material sonthesa meresponse. The endings showed that the control factors considered are not statistically significant in attenuating the response. Finally, the last two studies attempt to make small robots more adaptable to promote safer interactions. This is carried out by em bedding the recognition of unwanted physical interactions into companion robot with the appropriate timing of responses. The findings of the first study highlight the pos sibility of characterizing children's negative interactions with robotic toys relying on accelerometer sensor. The second study showed that producing a late response to an action (i.e. greater than 1.0 s) could negatively affect the children's comprehension of the intended message. The work presented in this dissertation is multidisciplinary that involves the field of Mechanical Engineering and Information Technology

Proceedings of the 6th international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2006)

The proceedings of the conferenc