Social Robots in Special Education: Current Status and Future Challenges

Abstract

Nowadays, we are witnessing the new technological revolution characterized by the participation of a new generation of robots in humans’ real life. This type of robots is called “Social Robots” and aims to help humans in their everyday activities. A socially sensitive and high demanding application field of these robots is the education of children having a variety of disorders e.g. autism spectral disorders. This work reviews the past approaches of child-robot interaction for educational purposes, by highlighting the progress achieved up to now and summarizes the specific challenges that need to be addressed in the near future.