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International Symposium on Experimental Robotics

ISER 2018: Proceedings of the 2018 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics pp 608–618Cite as

Month-Long, In-Home Socially Assistive Robot for Children with Diverse Needs

Part of the Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics book series (SPAR,volume 11)

Abstract

Socially assistive robotics (SAR) has the potential to close the gap between need and access to individualized, longitudinal support for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that supplements and augments that of therapist, clinicians, and other caregivers. To this end, we developed a fully autonomous SAR system designed for month-long, in-home interventions with children with ASD. In this paper, we investigate a single case study with two siblings; one is typically developing and the other is affected by ASD. To better understand their help-seeking behaviors and engagement patterns, we define and analyze measures of participants’ attentiveness. Our analysis shows that there are strong correlations between attentiveness and challenge level for both participants. We discuss how attentiveness can be used to optimize challenge level, detect help-seeking behaviors, and improve robot feedback for individuals with diverse needs.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Science Foundation grant IIS-1139148.

Disclosure. Co-author Maja Matarić is co-founder and chief science officer of Embodied, Inc.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Caitlyn Clabaugh, Shomik Jain, Balasubramanian Thiagarajan, Zhonghao Shi, Leena Mathur, Kartik Mahajan, Gisele Ragusa & Maja Matarić

Authors
  1. Caitlyn Clabaugh
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  2. Shomik Jain
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  3. Balasubramanian Thiagarajan
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  4. Zhonghao Shi
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  5. Leena Mathur
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  6. Kartik Mahajan
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  7. Gisele Ragusa
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  8. Maja Matarić
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Caitlyn Clabaugh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

    Jing Xiao

  2. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Torsten Kröger

  3. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Prof. Oussama Khatib

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Clabaugh, C. et al. (2020). Month-Long, In-Home Socially Assistive Robot for Children with Diverse Needs. In: Xiao, J., Kröger, T., Khatib, O. (eds) Proceedings of the 2018 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics. ISER 2018. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33950-0_52

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