A New Socially Assistive Robot with Integrated Serious Games for Therapies with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Down Syndrome: A Pilot Study

Abstract

This work introduces a new socially assistive robot termed MARIA T21 (meaning “Mobile Autonomous Robot for Interaction with Autistics”, with the addition of the acronym T21, meaning “Trisomy 21”, which is used to designate individuals with Down syndrome). This new robot is used in psychomotor therapies for children with Down syndrome (contributing to improve their proprioception, postural balance, and gait) as well as in psychosocial and cognitive therapies for children with autism spectrum disorder. The robot uses, as a novelty, an embedded mini-video projector able to project Serious Games on the floor or tables to make already-established therapies funnier to these children, thus creating a motivating and facilitating effect for both children and therapists. The Serious Games were developed in Python through the library Pygame, considering theoretical bases of behavioral psychology for these children, which are integrated into the robot through the robot operating system (ROS). Encouraging results from the child–robot interaction are shown, according to outcomes obtained from the application of the Goal Attainment Scale. Regarding the Serious Games, they were considered suitable based on both the “Guidelines for Game Design of Serious Games for Children” and the “Evaluation of the Psychological Bases” used during the games’ development. Thus, this pilot study seeks to demonstrate that the use of a robot as a therapeutic tool together with the concept of Serious Games is an innovative and promising tool to help health professionals in conducting therapies with children with autistic spectrum disorder and Down syndrome. Due to health issues imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the sample of children was limited to eight children (one child with typical development, one with Trisomy 21, both female, and six children with ASD, one girl and five boys), from 4 to 9 years of age. For the non-typically developing children, the inclusion criterion was the existence of a conclusive diagnosis and fulfillment of at least 1 year of therapy. The protocol was carried out in an infant psychotherapy room with three video cameras, supervised by a group of researchers and a therapist. The experiments were separated into four steps: The first stage was composed of a robot introduction followed by an approximation between robot and child to establish eye contact and assess proxemics and interaction between child/robot. In the second stage, the robot projected Serious Games on the floor, and emitted verbal commands, seeking to evaluate the child’s susceptibility to perform the proposed tasks. In the third stage, the games were performed for a certain time, with the robot sending messages of positive reinforcement to encourage the child to accomplish the game. Finally, in the fourth stage, the robot finished the games and said goodbye to the child, using messages aiming to build a closer relationship with the child.

Exploring the Potential of Social Robots for Speech and Language Therapy: A Review and Analysis of Interactive Scenarios

“…The paper [47] introduces a newly developed socially assistive robot (MARIA T21) used in psychomotor therapies for children with Down syndrome and psychosocial and cognitive therapies for children with ASD. The authors describe a pilot study with serious games in four stages and highlight the children's emotional interplay with the robot, and it is observed that the robot MARIA T21 demonstrates notable gain in the field of assistive robotics.…”

“…The participants in this scenario are the social robot and eight children, supervised by the therapist and a group of researchers. Activity description [47], page 6-14 (see in Section 5 Methodology)…”

Effects of COVID-19 on children with autism

“…Robots can provide these services during epidemics without the risk of transmitting infection. In addition, children with autism communicate more engagingly and have better social behaviors with robots than with human trainees[ 78 , 79 ].…”

Technical Development of the CeCi Social Robot

“…The development of this robot is mainly based on the article by Flores et al [ 4 ]. However, the proposals of [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ] were reviewed to complement and improve this prototype.…”