Developing a robotic platform to play with pre-school autistic children in a classroom environment

Abstract

This article presents a study with five children with autism who were involved in a game. As relatively little work has been done on using robots in a classroom setting for children with autism, this paper investigates the potential use of robots as an educational companion for children with autism in a classroom setting. The target users were pre-schoolers diagnosed with high-functioning autism. The aim of the study was to find out how turn-taking games with a robot among the children could encourage social interaction skills in children with autism. Behavioral criteria such as eye gaze and touch were evaluated using video data. Based on our observation, autistic children with low social communication scores have a lower ratio of eye contact compare to autistic children with high social communication. The analysis of behavioral observations also revealed that the autistic children with higher scores of social communication skills directed significantly more eye gaze and touch towards the robot. This finding supports the idea that robot was suitable for encouraging interaction. But the results reveal a need for long term studies in order to establish the full benefits of using robots in the classroom for children with autism.