Multimodal Human-Robot Interactions: the Neurorehabilitation of Severe Autistic Children

Abstract

In the context of human-robot interactions, we studied quantitatively and qualitatively the interaction between autistic children and a mobile toy robot during free spontaneous game play. A range of cognitive nonverbal criteria including eye contact, touch, manipulation, and posture were analysed, firstly in a dyadic interaction and secondly in a triadic interaction. Once the cognitive state between the child and the robot established, the child interacts with a third person displaying positive emotion. Both dyadic and triadic interactions of autistic children and a mobile toy robot suggest that the mobile toy robot in an ecological situation such as free, spontaneous game play could be used as a neural mediator in order to improve children's brain activity. Keywords-multimodal interactions ; severe autism ; mobile toy robot ; spontaneous free game play ; neural mediator.