Multisensory robotic therapy to promote natural emotional interaction for children with ASD

Abstract

Children with autism have a hard time both with expressing their emotions, and with understanding the emotions of others. As the population of children with autism increases, it is crucial we create effective therapeutic programs that will improve their communication skills. We present an interactive robotic system that delivers emotional and social behaviors for multi-sensory therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders. Our framework includes emotion-based robotic gestures and facial expressions, as well as vision and audio-based monitoring system for quantitative measurement of the interaction.