Multi-robot engagement in special education: A preliminary study in autism

Abstract

An engagement of humanoid social robots in special education may raise ethics questions. Hence, the development of useful therapeutic treatments may be hindered. To circumvent the latter, we propose training a humanoid robot R1 toward simulating the behavior of a child. Then, use another humanoid robot R2 to operate on robot R1 toward developing an effective treatment in special education without raising ethics questions. Experiments here consider children with autism. Preliminary application results have been encouraging. This work also suggests a novel social robot modeling based on gestalt representations.