Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

Using social robots to study abnormal social development

Social robots recognize and respond to human social cues with appropriate behaviors. Social robots, and the technology used in their construction, can be unique tools in the study of abnormal social development. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by social and communicative impairments. Based on three years of integration and immersion with a clinical research group which performs more than 130 diagnostic evaluations of children for autism per year, this paper discusses how social robots will make an impact on the ways in which we diagnose, treat, and understand autism

Robots as embodied beings- Interactionally sensitive body movements in interactions among autistic children and a robot

Peer reviewe

A Virtual Conversational Agent for Teens with Autism: Experimental Results and Design Lessons

We present the design of an online social skills development interface for teenagers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The interface is intended to enable private conversation practice anywhere, anytime using a web-browser. Users converse informally with a virtual agent, receiving feedback on nonverbal cues in real-time, and summary feedback. The prototype was developed in consultation with an expert UX designer, two psychologists, and a pediatrician. Using the data from 47 individuals, feedback and dialogue generation were automated using a hidden Markov model and a schema-driven dialogue manager capable of handling multi-topic conversations. We conducted a study with nine high-functioning ASD teenagers. Through a thematic analysis of post-experiment interviews, identified several key design considerations, notably: 1) Users should be fully briefed at the outset about the purpose and limitations of the system, to avoid unrealistic expectations. 2) An interface should incorporate positive acknowledgment of behavior change. 3) Realistic appearance of a virtual agent and responsiveness are important in engaging users. 4) Conversation personalization, for instance in prompting laconic users for more input and reciprocal questions, would help the teenagers engage for longer terms and increase the system's utility

Icanlearn: A Mobile Application For Creating Flashcards And Social Stories\u3csup\u3etm\u3c/sup\u3e For Children With Autistm

The number of children being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is on the rise, presenting new challenges for their parents and teachers to overcome. At the same time, mobile computing has been seeping its way into every aspect of our lives in the form of smartphones and tablet computers. It seems only natural to harness the unique medium these devices provide and use it in treatment and intervention for children with autism. This thesis discusses and evaluates iCanLearn, an iOS flashcard app with enough versatility to construct Social StoriesTM. iCanLearn provides an engaging, individualized learning experience to children with autism on a single device, but the most powerful way to use iCanLearn is by connecting two or more devices together in a teacher-learner relationship. The evaluation results are presented at the end of the thesis

Convolutional Neural Network for Stereotypical Motor Movement Detection in Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are often associated with specific atypical postural or motor behaviors, of which Stereotypical Motor Movements (SMMs) have a specific visibility. While the identification and the quantification of SMM patterns remain complex, its automation would provide support to accurate tuning of the intervention in the therapy of autism. Therefore, it is essential to develop automatic SMM detection systems in a real world setting, taking care of strong inter-subject and intra-subject variability. Wireless accelerometer sensing technology can provide a valid infrastructure for real-time SMM detection, however such variability remains a problem also for machine learning methods, in particular whenever handcrafted features extracted from accelerometer signal are considered. Here, we propose to employ the deep learning paradigm in order to learn discriminating features from multi-sensor accelerometer signals. Our results provide preliminary evidence that feature learning and transfer learning embedded in the deep architecture achieve higher accurate SMM detectors in longitudinal scenarios.Comment: Presented at 5th NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning and Interpretation in Neuroimaging (MLINI), 2015, (http://arxiv.org/html/1605.04435), Report-no: MLINI/2015/1

Virtual reality based behavioural learning for autistic children

Autism is a disorder in the growth and development of a brain or central nervous system that covers a large spectrum of impairment, symptoms and skills. The children who are suffering from autism face difficulties in communicating and adapting well in the community as they have trouble in understanding what others think and feel. Therefore, there is a need to design effective e-learning method to ease the communication process and to deliver required knowledge to autistic children. Past researchers have highlighted that a virtual reality based learning environment, a computer simulated environment, can facilitate the learning process among autistic children. It is also recognized that the virtual agent plays an important role in virtual worlds as it eases the communication process between the virtual environment (VE) and children with autism. This research aimed to design an effective learning environment for autistic children by developing a virtual environment prototype using face-to-face interviews and picture exchange communication system (PECS) methodology for data collection which was analysed using quantitative tests. The findings suggest that the toilet virtual environment topped the list for being the most popular learning environment among autistic children for behavioural training. The designed prototype identifies autistic children’s and their parents’ needs and also addresses limitations in an existing virtual environment

The integration of children with Autism in the Egyptian society by the use of ICT tools

Autism has been discussed through the fields of medicine, sociology or psychology all over the past decades. Today, however it is being discussed through a different lens: „Communication‟. Being privileged by so many virtues, the Mass communication field not only spreads information, news and discusses views but also bonds people together. In that sense, Children with Autism should be part of this dynamic sphere, with the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools, integrating those suffering from autism within the Egyptian society. A Descriptive Survey research clarifies the actual use of children with autism to ICT tools through the perspectives of their parents and their caregivers. A comparison between both views interweaving with various demographic criteria clarifies a larger outlook of the issue. The topic was explored through the Uses & Gratification and Digital Divide theories and further added the Laswell Model to elucidate possible clarifications to realize the integration of children with autism in the Egyptian society through the use of ICT tools. „Who, says what to whom‟ principle is scrutinized to identify the best mode to address the information to the children with Autism and make it reach them, based on research and experience. Although the innate limitations of children with Autism can impede integration willingness, the role of ICT can be shaped to serve the parents and caregivers with valid ideas, information and handling mechanisms with the aim of supporting the children with Autism to develop improved behavioral patterns. These techniques will help people affected with autism to be more accepted within the society‟s social code of conduct, and consequently more integrated. High importance is given to early intervention that avoids the hassle of unlearning negative traits. iii The research proved that neither the standard of education nor the financial capabilities of the parents, directly affects the child with Autism‟s acquisition of ICT tools thus the integration within the society. Computer tablets in particular and various ICT tools in general are provided, but the main issue is the awareness and training of the parents and caregivers to know that the child‟s use should be accompanied and tutored for best outcomes. A further step in the research focuses on the correct choice and use of the applications installed on the computer tablets and assistive ICT tools to be tailored to help each child‟s personalized need

Socially Assistive Robots for Older Adults and People with Autism: An Overview

Over one billion people in the world suffer from some form of disability. Nevertheless, according to the World Health Organization, people with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to deficiencies in services, such as health care, rehabilitation, support, and assistance. In this sense, recent technological developments can mitigate these deficiencies, offering less-expensive assistive systems to meet users’ needs. This paper reviews and summarizes the research efforts toward the development of these kinds of systems, focusing on two social groups: older adults and children with autism.This research was funded by the Spanish Government TIN2016-76515-R grant for the COMBAHO project, supported with Feder funds. It has also been supported by Spanish grants for PhD studies ACIF/2017/243 and FPU16/00887