Issues of Robot-Human Interaction Dynamics in the Rehabilitation of Children with Autism

Abstract

The paper discusses dynamics in human-robot interaction. Firstly, we propose a terminology for classifying robot-human interaction dynamics of increasing complexity. Secondly, we address the role of human-robot interaction in a particular application area, namely rehabilitation. Specifically, we discuss the area of autism and how mobile robots can play a therapeutic role in the rehabilitation of children with autism (investigated in the project AURORA). Problems and challenges of this work in progress aiming at `getting the interaction dynamics right' are discussed. 1. Introduction: Building Interactive Robotic Systems In recent years, the concept of believability and believable characters has attracted a lot of attention in the field of autonomous agents ((Bates, 1994), (Dautenhahn, 1998), (Porter and Susman, 2000)). Increasingly, researchers are exploiting techniques which have been originally developed in Arts and animation in order to allow a `suspension of disbelief'....