Abstract
Various benefits are being envisioned for enhancing autism interventions with a robot. But what features should such interventions have if they are to be successful? While there are quite a few papers that describe specific user requirements or needs, a more comprehensive account thereof should help to inform the development of such interventions. We therefore present a literature review on the user requirements for robot-assisted interventions. We report on various themes that emerged from our analysis and discuss how enhancing an intervention with a robot might fulfil those requirements.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In the remainder of this paper, we will refer to the adult users as “autism experts”, when addressing the whole group.
References
Alcorn, A.M., et al.: Educators’ views on using humanoid robots with autistic learners in special education settings in England. Front. Robot. AI 6(Nov), 1–15 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2019.00107
Alhaddad, A.Y., Cabibihan, J.-J., Bonarini, A.: Head impact severity measures for small social robots thrown during meltdown in autism. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 11(2), 255–270 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-018-0494-3
American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Author, Washington, DC, 5th edn. (2013). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596
Barakova, E.I., Gillesen, J.C.C., Huskens, B.E.B.M., Lourens, T.: End-user programming architecture facilitates the uptake of robots in social therapies. Robot. Auton. Syst. 61(7), 704–713 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2012.08.001
Baron-Cohen, S.: Autism: the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1156(1), 68–80 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04467.x
Begum, M., et al.: Measuring the efficacy of robots in autism therapy. In: Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI 2015, pp. 335–342. ACM Press, New York (2015). https://doi.org/10.1145/2696454.2696480
Clabaugh, C., et al.: Long-term personalization of an in-home socially assistive robot for children with autism spectrum disorders. Front. Robot. AI 6(Nov), 1–18 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2019.00110
Coeckelbergh, M., et al.: A survey of expectations about the role of robots in robot-assisted therapy for children with ASD: ethical acceptability, trust, sociability, appearance, and attachment. Sci. Eng. Ethics 22(1), 47–65 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9649-x
Colton, M.B., Ricks, D.J., Goodrich, M.A., Dariush, B., Fujimura, K., Fujiki, M.: Toward therapist-in-the-loop assistive robotics for children with autism and specific language impairment. In: AISB New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction Symposium, Edinburgh, Scotland, pp. 1–5 (2009)
Frauenberger, C., Good, J., Keay-Bright, W.: Designing technology for children with special needs: bridging perspectives through participatory design. CoDesign 7(1), 1–28 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2011.587013
Frauenberger, C., Makhaeva, J., Spiel, K.: Blending methods: developing participatory design sessions for autistic children. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pp. 39–49. ACM, New York (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3078072.3079727
Gernsbacher, M.A.: Editorial perspective: the use of person-first language in scholarly writing may accentuate stigma. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 58(7), 859–861 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12706
Giullian, N., Ricks, D.J., Atherton, J.A., Colton, M.B., Goodrich, M.A., Brinton, B.: Detailed requirements for robots in autism therapy. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, pp. 2595–2602. IEEE (2010). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSMC.2010.5641908
Goodrich, M.A., et al.: Incorporating a robot into an autism therapy team. IEEE Intell. Syst. 27(2), 52–59 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2012.40
Hazen, E.P., Stornelli, J.L., O’Rourke, J.A., Koesterer, K., McDougle, C.J.: Sensory symptoms in autism spectrum disorders. Harv. Rev. Psychiatry 22(2), 112–124 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1097/01.HRP.0000445143.08773.58
Huijnen, C.A.G.J., Lexis, M.A.S., Jansens, R., de Witte, L.P.: How to implement robots in interventions for children with autism? A co-creation study involving people with autism, parents and professionals. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 47(10), 3079–3096 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3235-9
Huijnen, C.A.G.J., Lexis, M.A.S., Jansens, R., de Witte, L.P.: Roles, strengths and challenges of using robots in interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). J. Autism Dev. Disord. 49(1), 11–21 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3683-x
Huijnen, C.A.G.J., Lexis, M.A.S., de Witte, L.P.: Matching robot KASPAR to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) therapy and educational goals. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 8(4), 445–455 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0369-4
Kenny, L., Hattersley, C., Molins, B., Buckley, C., Povey, C., Pellicano, E.: Which terms should be used to describe autism? Perspectives from the UK autism community. Autism 20(4), 442–462 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361315588200
Martin-Ortiz, M., Kim, M.-G., Barakova, E.I.: Mobile application for executing therapies with robots. In: Rojas, I., Joya, G., Catala, A. (eds.) IWANN 2017. LNCS, vol. 10306, pp. 82–92. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59147-6_8
Pellicano, E., et al.: My life at school: understanding the experiences of children and young people with special educational needs in residential special schools. Office of the Children’s Commissioner, London, UK (2014)
Putnam, C., Hanschke, C., Todd, J., Gemmell, J., Kollia, M.: Interactive technologies designed for children with autism. ACM Trans. Access. Comput. 12(3), 1–37 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3342285
Ricks, D.J., Colton, M.B.: Trends and considerations in robot-assisted autism therapy. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4354–4359. No. August, IEEE (2010). https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509327
Robins, B., Amirabdollahian, F., Ji, Z., Dautenhahn, K.: Tactile interaction with a humanoid robot for children with autism: a case study analysis involving user requirements and results of an initial implementation. In: 19th International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 704–711. IEEE (2010). https://doi.org/10.1109/ROMAN.2010.5598641
Robins, B., et al.: Human-centred design methods: developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials. Int. J. Hum Comput Stud. 68(12), 873–898 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.08.001
Robins, B., Otero, N., Ferrari, E., Dautenhahn, K.: Eliciting requirements for a robotic toy for children with autism - results from user panels. In: RO-MAN 2007 - The 16th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Jeju, Korea, pp. 101–106. IEEE (2007). https://doi.org/10.1109/ROMAN.2007.4415061
Scassellati, B., Admoni, H., Matarić, M.J.: Robots for use in autism research. Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 14(1), 275–294 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-bioeng-071811-150036
Scassellati, B., et al.: Improving social skills in children with ASD using a long-term, in-home social robot. Sci. Robot. 3(21), eaat7544 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aat7544
Schadenberg, B.R., et al.: Predictable robots for autistic children - variance in robot behaviour, idiosyncrasies in autistic children’s characteristics, and child-robot engagement. ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. 28(5), 1–42 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3468849
Schadenberg, B.R., Reidsma, D., Heylen, D.K.J., Evers, V.: Differences in spontaneous interactions of autistic children in an interaction with an adult and humanoid robot. Front. Robot. AI 7, 19 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.00028
Schadenberg, B.R., Reidsma, D., Heylen, D.K.J., Evers, V.: “I see what you did there”: understanding people’s social perception of a robot and its predictability. ACM Trans. Hum.-Robot Interact. 10(3), 1–28 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3461534
Schadenberg, B., Neerincx, M., Cnossen, F., Looije, R.: Personalising game difficulty to keep children motivated to play with a social robot: a Bayesian approach. Cogn. Syst. Res. 43, 222–231 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2016.08.003
Simut, R.E., Vanderfaeillie, J., Peca, A., Van de Perre, G., Vanderborght, B.: Children with autism spectrum disorders make a fruit salad with probo, the social robot: an interaction study. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 46(1), 113–126 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2556-9
Spiel, K., Frauenberger, C., Keyes, O., Fitzpatrick, G.: Agency of autistic children in technology research-a critical literature review. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 26(6), 1–40 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3344919
Spiel, K., Malinverni, L., Good, J., Frauenberger, C.: Participatory evaluation with autistic children. In: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, vol. 2017-May, pp. 5755–5766. ACM, New York (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025851
Wolfswinkel, J.F., Furtmueller, E., Wilderom, C.P.M.: Using grounded theory as a method for rigorously reviewing literature. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 22(1), 45–55 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.51
Zheng, Z., Nie, G., Swanson, A., Weitlauf, A., Warren, Z., Sarkar, N.: A randomized controlled trial of an intelligent robotic response to joint attention intervention system. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 50(8), 2819–2831 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04388-5
Zubrycki, I., Granosik, G.: Understanding therapists’ needs and attitudes towards robotic support. The roboterapia project. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 8(4), 553–563 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0372-9
Acknowledgements
This work was made possible through funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no: 688835 (DE-ENIGMA).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Schadenberg, B.R., Reidsma, D., Heylen, D.K.J., Evers, V. (2021). User Requirements for Developing Robot-Assisted Interventions for Autistic Children. In: Li, H., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13086. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_55
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_55
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90524-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90525-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)