Interpretation of Humanoid Design towards ASD Learning Abilities: Theoretical framework

The humanoid robot has been used in part of the intervention programme for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Some studies address what kind of form and functionality a human-like robot should have to be socially accepted by them as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children's motivation faces complex challenges.  This research aims to study the specific factor, problems and connection elements between the contexts of issues related to the interpretation of humanoid design toward ASD learning abilities. All the studied variables identified from the literature of recent theory models were summarized and arranged accordingly to form the conceptual framework. Keywords: Humanoid Robot Design; Personalisation; New Product Development; ASD Learning Abilities eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI7.380

Socially Assistive Robot Enabled Home-Based Care for Supporting People with Autism

The growing number of people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an issue of concern in Australia and many countries. In order to improve the engagement, reciprocity, productivity and usefulness of people with ASD in a home-based environment, in this paper the authors report on a 9 month Australian home-based care trial of socially assistive robot (Lucy) to support two young adults with autism. This work demonstrates that by marrying personhood (of people with ASD) with human-like communication modalities of Lucy potentially positive outcomes can be achieved in terms of engagement, productivity and usefulness as well as reciprocity of the people with ASD. Lucy also provide respite to their carers (e.g., parents) in their day to day living

Kaspar Explains: The Effect of Causal Explanations on Visual Perspective Taking Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

© IEEE 2023 ALL RIGHT RESERVED

A proposal to act on Theory of Mind by applying robotics and virtual worlds with children with ASD

The article proposes an intervention framed under a single-subject research design where robotics and a 3D virtual environment are used jointly to improve the development of Theory of Mind in children with ASD. The project aims at verifying if the use of a humanoid robot, with high interactive abilities and responses, along with a virtual robot in a social virtual world can enable an improved comprehension of emotions and perspective taking. Specifically the planned activities are designed to gradually support the subjects with ASD in interactional settings in order to make them acquire the needed self-confidence to finally interact with a classmate in the virtual environment

Prepoznavanje in izražanje čustev: težave otrok z motnjo avtističnega spektra pri učenju tujega jezika in kako jih rešiti

Recognising emotions, facial expressions and tone of voice and body language, expressing and managing their own emotions, and understanding and responding to other people\u27s emotions are often difficult for children with autism spectrum disorder. Since the emotional codes of individuals with autism spectrum disorder are different, those people will possibly be awkward in expressing some throughout their lives. Although it might seem that children with autism spectrum disorder do not respond emotionally, the ability to understand their facial expressions could lead to an improvement in their social interaction difficulties. In addition, since autistic expressions might be unique to each child, recognising their emotions is important when delivering a personalised intervention to a child with autism spectrum disorder. In recent decades, researchers have become increasingly interested in the role of emotions in learning and teaching a foreign language beyond heavily investigated topics such as foreign language anxiety and motivation and attitudes towards the foreign language. In this paper, how emotions impact the motivation and success of children with autism spectrum disorder while they are learning a foreign language is presented. Challenges, opportunities and future research directions in this domain are given. (DIPF/Orig.

Evaluation of a robot-assisted therapy for children with autism and intellectual disability

It is well established that robots can be suitable assistants in the care and treatment of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the majority of the research focuses on stand-alone interventions, high-functioning individuals and the success is evaluated via qualitative analysis of videos recorded during the interaction. In this paper, we present a preliminary evaluation of our on-going research on integrating robot-assisted therapy in the treatment of children with ASD and Intellectual Disability (ID), which is the most common case. The experiment described here integrates a robot-assisted imitation training in the standard treat‐ ment of six hospitalised children with various level of ID, who were engaged by a robot on imitative tasks and their progress assessed via a quantitative psycho- diagnostic tool. Results show success in the training and encourage the use of a robotic assistant in the care of children with ASD and ID with the exception of those with profound ID, who may need a different approach

A comparison between a person and a robot in the attention, imitation, and repetitive and stereotypical behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder.

The aim of the present study was to assess the usefulness of QT, a socially assistive robot, in interventions with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by assessing children’s attention, imitation, and presence of repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. Fifteen children diagnosed with ASD, aged from 4 to 14 years participated in two short interactions, one with a person and one with QT robot. Statistical analyses revealed that children directed more attention towards the robot than to the person, imitated the robot as much as the person, and engaged in fewer repetitive or stereotyped behaviors with the robot than with the person. These results support previous research demonstrating the usefulness of robots in interventions with children with ASD and provide new evidence to the usefulness of robots in reducing repetitive and stereotyped behaviors in children with ASD, which can affect children’s learning

Soft Robot Design to Support Communication for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Our study investigates the advantages of using soft robots to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder advance their social skills focusing on speech development. The field of developing robots for therapeutic use is still relatively new. The studies thus far have had positive responses and progressive data with majority of the users. Further investigation of their application in varying clinic settings will be important in aiding those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a chronic disease however many patients have proven that varying practices and therapeutic activities can help advance their motor and communication skills no matter their level of disability. We designed a soft robot utilizing mechanical motion and sound appealing to our target users. The prototypes we created test varying interactive components encompassing visual responses, sound features and kinetic movement. Our varying iterations of prototypes explore the best visual feedback for engaging the user and enticing them to continue speaking. We believe our developed soft robot when interacting with the ASD children will help improve their speech and communication development and relax them in stressful environments