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

Socially assistive robots for teaching emotional abilities to children with autism spectrum disorder

Socially assistive robots, when used in a way that takes into consideration children’s needs and developmental characteristics, can be useful tools to enable children’s development. More specifically, due to their characteristics (predictability, simplicity, and repetition) robots can be especially helpful to teach emotional abilities to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research has provided preliminary evidence that robots can help children improve in some domains such as joint attention and imitation. However, no studies have examined how robots can be integrated in intervention protocols targeting the acquisition of emotional abilities in children with ASD. This paper presents a work in progress on an emotional ability training developed for children with ASD using the QT socially assistive robot. This training aims to test whether children with ASD can benefit from a robot-mediated training to improve emotional ability

ProCRob Architecture for Personalized Social Robotics

For robot tutors, autonomy and personalizations are important factors in order to engage users as well as to personalize the content and interaction according to the needs of individuals. This paper presents the Programming Cognitive Robot (ProCRob) software architecture to target personalized social robotics in two complementary ways. ProCRob supports the development and personalization of social robot applications by teachers and therapists without computer programming background. It also supports the development of autonomous robots which can adapt according to the human-robot interaction context. ProCRob is based on our previous research on autonomous robotics and has been developed since 2015 by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the fields of AI, Robotics and Psychology as well as artists and designers at the University of Luxembourg. ProCRob is currently being used and further developed for therapy of children with autism, and for encouraging rehabilitation activities in patients with post-stroke. This is paper presents a summary of ProCRob and its application in autism

More Attention and Less Repetitive and Stereotyped Behaviors using a Robot with Children with Autism

The aim of the present study was to assess the usefulness of QTrobot, 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 the robot. Statistical analyses revealed that children directed more attention towards the robot than towards 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 short interactions 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