Intelligent robots for autistic children

People on the autism spectrum function differently, and find it more difficult to identify the human emotions of their peers. Educators therefore try to clarify feelings and vocabulary with children on the autism spectrum. Nevertheless, this can be anxiety-provoking for the youngster, who finds himself with an adult he knows little about. In Nancy, at the University of Lorraine, researchers wanted to work on the use of robots to help transmit this knowledge.

Indeed, machines with artificial intelligence are far more interesting for children on the autism spectrum, as there is no notion of unpredictability. The machine will always act in the same way, both in its gestures and its "emotions". As this report shows, three automata are used.

• Nao is a humanoid robot that can move and teach body parts and ways of moving to children.
• Leka is the least anthropomorphic, since it can turn on itself, vibrate, light up, and has a small space showing its face. It is controlled by a tablet and is aimed at individuals on the more severe autism spectrum or with intellectual disabilities.
• Finally, Buddy has a large, cute, tactile figure for emotion recognition and vocabulary cards with a QR code.

The results obtained so far are very positive, showing a better understanding of the elements with the robots, as well as a greater transposition of what has been learned into the everyday lives of the children and teenagers using them. The next step will be to add stronger artificial intelligence to adapt even better to the specificities of each individual and give the robots more feedback so that they react to what's going on.

Running time: 8min38

Image: Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay