From Isolation to Communication: A Case Study Evaluation of Robot Assisted Play for Children with Autism with a Minimally Expres

– The general context of the work presented in this paper is assistive robotics with our long-term aim to support children with autism. This paper is part of the Aurora project that studies ways in which robotic systems can encourage basic communication and social interaction skills in children with autism. This paper investigates how a small minimally expressive humanoid robot KASPAR can assume the role of a social mediator - encouraging children with low functioning autism to interact with the robot, and to break their isolation and importantly, to interact with other people. The article provides a case study evaluation of segments of trials where three children with autism, who usually do not interact with other people in their day to day activity, interacted with the robot and with copresent adults. A preliminary observational analysis was undertaken which applied, in abbreviated form, certain principles from conversation analysis - notably attention to the context in which the t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ACHI
• Authors: Ben Robins, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Paul Dickerson
• Keywords: ACHI 2009, Conversation Analysis, Expressive Humanoid Robot, Human Computer Interaction, Social Interaction Skills