Can Social Interaction Skills Be Taught by a Social Agent? (The Role of a Robotic Mediator in Autism Therapy )

(Research Paper)

What is discussed

What is Autism The AURORA Project Experiments: First pair, ---Child A , B and Robot Second pair, ---- Child C , D and Robot Third pair, ---- Child E , F and Robot Results Communicative Aspects of Interaction Comments on Paper

What is Autism??

It is a Neurological disorder that is observable in early childhood and persists throughout the lifespan

According to National Autistic Society, a child autism shows impairment in following key areas:

1. Social interaction2. Language development3. Eye Contact4. Sensory Experiences

The AURORA Project

The AURORA project was initiated in 1998. Its goal was to develop a robotic agent which would aid in the therapy

of children with autism. The AURORA project uses a single interactive robot and studies different

scenarios in order to characterize children's behavior when playing with the robot.

The one-child-one-robot scenario is their basic approach, with the robot in the role of a therapeutic teaching device, a tool that can be used to teach children with autism basic social interaction skills.

Setup for Experiments

The trial sessions took place in a room at the Radlett Lodge School, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.

These took place in a room with a single door and a window. Six children participated in the trials, in three pairs. The children consisted of four who had had a previous experience with

the robot, and two who had not seen or interacted with the robot before There is a robot who performs a number of actions:1. avoidance of obstacles including people, 2. following of a heat source3. the generation of simple speech and phrases.

Child A and child B playing with the robot

Child C and child D playing with the robot

Child E and child F playing with the robot

Results(Child A and B)

The Child B and C had already encountered this trial before The pair A and B were Most Social The pair C and D were less Social than the previous pair The least Social were the E and F, none of them had already

encountered the trial before The Experiment results that robot needs to be improved for its

interaction outside the class room in order to analyze its Environment more Accurately

Communicative Aspects of Interaction

Local Structured Interactions Global Structured Interactions

Meta Structured Interactions

Hints for Improvement

The results would have been more clear if there would have been numerical figures or statistics involved

The research would have been more improved by encircling the children with physical disorder and autism too

if the aspect of communication also included communication with model based or Goal based or learning based robotic agent, etc. then the research would be have more improved