Abstract
Social robots have been a valuable tool for autistic children to learn about play and interaction. The study was carried out on children diagnosed with high-functioning autism. A 30 cm tall tele-operated robot named, “Rofina” was used to study the interaction between autistic children and robot. With a 2- DOF head on the body, Rofina displayed basic emotions and exhibited social pleasantries while playing a board game with the children. During the study, the autistic children were comfortable with the robot’s presence. The children appreciated that Rofina addressed them by name and looked towards them. These children, who normally did not finish the game, managed to complete the game with enthusiasm. More user studies need to be done in order to support these findings and by using larger sample size in a real-life scenario. There is potential for Rofina to be used in a classroom setting for children with special needs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Werry, I., Dautenhahn, K., Harwin, W.: Evaluating the response of children with autism to a robot. In: Proceedings of Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, RESNA 2001 (2001)
Ferrari, E., Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K.: Therapeutic and educational objectives in Robot Assisted Play for children with autism. In: The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication – RO-MAN 2009, Toyama, Japan, September 27-October 2, pp. 108–114 (2009)
Ricks, D.J., Colton, M.B.: Trends and Considerations in Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Anchorage, AK, May 3-7, pp. 4354–4359 (2010)
Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., Te Boekhorst, R., Billard, A.: Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children with autism: can small humanoid robot help encourage social interaction skills? Universal Access in the Information Society 4(2) (2005)
Dautenhahn, K.: Roles and functions of robots in human society: implications from research in autism therapy. Robotica 21(4), 443–452 (2003)
Marti, P., Moderini, C., Guisti, L., Pollini, A.: A robotic toy for children with special needs: From requirements to design. In: 2009 IEEE 11th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, Kyoto, Japan, June 23-26 (2009)
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G.: A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50, 696–735 (1974)
Sigman, M., Dijamco, A., Gratier, M., Rozga, A.: Early detection of core deficits in autism. Ment. Retard. Dev. Disabil. Res. Rev. 10(4), 221–233 (2004)
Yow, A.P., Campolo, A., Wong, H.Y.A.: Design of a Robotic Platform for Behavioral Analysis of Autistic Children. In: 25th Annual Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents, Singapore, May 9-11 (2012)
Cheng, M.: Robot teaches autistic kids to interact. The Associated Press (2011), http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41967936/ns/health-mental_health/t/robot-teaches-autistic-kids-interact/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wong, A. et al. (2012). A User Trial Study to Understand Play Behaviors of Autistic Children Using a Social Robot. In: Ge, S.S., Khatib, O., Cabibihan, JJ., Simmons, R., Williams, MA. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7621. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34103-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34103-8_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-34102-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-34103-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)