How can social robots spark collaboration and engagement among people with intellectual disability?

Abstract

Social robots have been successfully used in previous research to develop social behaviours among participants with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Technology has often been found to be a contributing factor to heightened engagement in learning activities, including for people with intellectual disability. This research proposes to build on these two opportunities by exploring the potential of social robots to elicit social interaction, cooperation and engagement among groups of adults with intellectual disability. The study presented here involved observation, semi structured interviews and video analysis of six participants with intellectual disability interacting with a social robot in a series of five weekly workshops. The robot used for this study was Cozmo ©, a small AI toy robot with a vehicular appearance and movement, and animated eyes that it uses to display human emotions. Participants played games with Cozmo and took turns in controlling its movements in small groups. Through an inductive thematic analysis we identified themes of collaboration, competition, positive affect and attitudes of participants as well as the factors that affected their engagement with Cozmo. We detail characteristic behaviours within each theme. The study found that interacting with Cozmo resulted in positive affect, high engagement and collaboration. The aspects of Cozmo that had the most positive impact were the ability to play games with it and its humanlike relatable behaviour.