Viability of Robots in Improving Autistic Student's Engagement and Happiness When Learning

摘要

The adoption of robotics in other industries is increasing exponentially at a rapid pace due to increased interest in the field. Advancements in robotic technology allow them to be more capable of teaching a variety of topics while costing much less than even just a decade ago. This means that robots are more ready than ever before to be deployed globally in the educational space. This paper aims to check the robots’ viability in improving autistic students’ engagement and happiness, rather than just their performance. Six autistic students aged 7–12 participated in this experiment (four male and two female). Several different structured scenarios and tasks were used to evaluate the student’s happiness and engagement on a scale of five. The children showed an improvement in the happiness rate from 36.6% to 80%, and increased the engagement rate from 51.6% to 81.6%. It was also found that the children were showing much more emotion and were much more responsive during the tasks. The Pearson skewness and standard error from the mean showed that the data used in these experiments were consistent and closely distributed to the norm (Mean value).