Abstract
Rob’Autism proposes an approach to improve social skills of people with autistic spectrum disorders. The program focuses on linking voice to gestures, and checks the emotional effects of this linkage. Rob’Autism is divided into 20 sessions of 1 h each, alternating preparatory sessions and robotics sessions. During the preparatory sessions, the subjects register their voices reading a story. During the robotics sessions, the subjects program the robot gestures according to the registered voices. In this program, the robots are used as an extension, and not as a companion as traditionally performed in other research programs. Consequently, the subjects immediately use it for their communication with others, showing consequent improvements of their communication skills, inside and outside the sessions, in a very short time. The program has also proven to length in time, as 6 months after its end, its effects on the subjects can still be observed. This article review the preliminary results of Rob’Autism, validated with 6 young test subjects with autism, aged 11–15.
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
References
Bekele, E.T., Lahiri, U., Swanson, A.R., Crittendon, J.A., Warren, Z.E., Sarkar, N.: A step towards developing adaptive robot-mediated intervention architecture (aria) for children with autism. IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng. 21(2) (2013)
Billard, A., Robins, B., Nadel, J., Dautenhahn, K.: Building robota, a mini-humanoid robot for the rehabilitation of children with autism. RESNA Assist. Technol. J. (2006)
Cabibihan, J.-J., Javed, H., Ang Jr, M., Aljunied, S.M.: Why robots? a survey on the roles and benefits of social robots in the therapy of children with autism. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 5(4) (2013)
Dautenhahn, K.: I could be you: the phenomenological dimension of social understanding. J. Cybern. Syst. (1997)
Dautenhahn, K.: Robots as social actors: Aurora and the case of autism. In: Third International Cognitive Technology Conference (1999)
Dickerson, P., Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K.: Where the action is: a conversation analytic perspective on interaction between a humanoid robot, a co-present adult and a child with an asd. Interact. Stud. 14(2) (2013)
Feil-Seifer, D., Black, M., Mataric, M.J., Narayanan, S.: Designing interactive technologies for supporting research in autism spectrum disorders. USC Interaction Lab Technical Report CRES-09-001 (2009)
Feil-Seifer, D., Mataric, M.J.: Using robots to augment (not replace) people in therapeutic settings. In: Robotics Science and Systems Workshop on Human-Robot Interaction: Perspectives and Contributions to Robotics from the Human Sciences (2011)
Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., Dubowski, J.: Does appearance matter in the interaction of children with autism with a humanoid robot? Interac. Stud. 7(3) (2006)
Robins, B., Dickerson, P., Stribling, P., Dautenhahn, K.: A case study in robot-human interaction. Interaction studies, Robot-mediated joint attention in children with autism (2004)
Scassellati, B.: How social robots will help us to diagnose, treat, and understand autism. In: International Symposium of Robotics Research (2005)
Shamsuddin S., Yussof H., Ismail L., Hanapiah F.A., Mohamed S., Piah, H.A., Zahari N.I.: Initial response of autistic children in human-robot interaction therapy with humanoid robot nao. In: International Colloquium on Signal Processing and its Applications (2012)
Tapus, A., Peca, A., Aly, A., Pop, C., Jisa, L., Pintea, S., Rusu, A.S., Daniel, O.D.: Children with autism social engagement in interaction with nao, an imitative robot: a series of single case experiments. Interact. Stud. 13(2) (2012)
Werry, I., Dautenhahn, K.: Applying mobile robot technology to the rehabilitation of autistic children. In: International Symposium on Intelligent Robotic Systems (1999)
Werry, I., Dautenhahn, K.: Modeling biology: structures, behaviors, evolution – vienna series in theoretical biology. In: Human-Robot Interaction as a Model for Autism Therapy: An Experimental Study with Children with Autism, pp. 283–299 (2007)
Acknowledgements
Rob’Autism project was made possible thanks to the contribution of CHU-Nantes, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, and the two non-profit organizations Stereolux and Robots!. We also would like to thank MAIF and EPSI for the financial support they have provided.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sakka, S. et al. (2018). Rob’Autism: How to Change Autistic Social Skills in 20 Weeks. In: Husty, M., Hofbaur, M. (eds) New Trends in Medical and Service Robots. MESROB 2016. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59972-4_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59972-4_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59971-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59972-4
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)