Therapists’ Perspectives After Implementing a Robot into Autism Therapy

Abstract

Socially assistive robots (SARs) are currently being developed to assist in the delivery of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapies to individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although SARs have demonstrated positive outcomes, minimal research has focused on investigating needs of the therapists that deliver treatments. Therapist perspectives are important as they will likely be the primary end-users of SARs. In this study, we investigated the perceptions and design requirements of ABA therapists towards SARs and the interfaces used to operate them. Therapists were interviewed after they independently designed, developed, and implemented their own robot-mediated interventions. Overall, therapists’ general perceptions towards integrating a SAR within their existing workflow was positive and they expected that children would benefit from ABA therapies delivered by a SAR. The therapists also provided insights on design requirements for utilizing SARs and their interfaces as well as potential clinical and future use cases for this technology.