Engaging Students with Profound and Multiple Disabilities Using Humanoid Robots

Abstract

Abstract. Engagement is the single best predictor of successful learning for children with intellectual disabilities yet achieving engagement with pupils who have profound or multiple disabilities (PMD) presents a challenge to educators. Robots have been used to engage children with autism but are they effective with pupils whose disabilities limit their ability to control other technology? Learning objectives were identified for eleven pupils with PMD and a humanoid robot was programmed to enable teachers to use it to help pupils achieve these objectives. These changes were evaluated with a series of eleven case studies where teacherpupil dyads were observed during four planned video recorded sessions. Engagement was rated in a classroom setting and during the last session with the robot. Video recordings were analysed for duration of engagement and teacher assistance and number of goals achieved. Rated engagement was significantly higher with the robot than in the classroom. Observations of engagement, assistance and goal achievement remained at the same level throughout the sessions suggesting no reduction in the novelty factor.

ICTs and Music in Generic Learning Disabilities

“…One of aims of complex behaviors was to enable the robot to be controlled remotely by microswitches and a joystick. Observations of engagement, assistance and goal achievement remained at the same level [21].…”

“…Research has shown that extensive use of computer software has contributed a lot in the reaction between a therapist and a patient in music therapy sessions especially with acquired brain injury patients [12]. Additionally a revolutionary use of robots to engage children with disabilities, especially autism has been proved very effective [21]. In conclusion, music technology has a precious role within therapeutic horizons and much better potential than it has been identified.…”

“…According to statistics and calculations pupils with intellectual disabilities is stable but there has been a rise in the number of children with profound and multiple disabilities (PMLD) [21]. Nevertheless it has to be proved that it will be the same with pupils with PMLD.…”

Imitation of Dynamic Walking with BSN for a Humanoid Robot

“…where Trans is an operator for obtaining the translational part of a transformation matrix and is the forward kinematics function, which can be written as: (10) where is the index of a base frame, is the index of an end-effector frame , is a transformation matrix from the th link frame to the th link frame of the robot's kinematic model, and is the angle of the th joint. The stability constraint can thus be written as: (11) where is a small threshold.…”

“…They have also been used for assisting children with learning difficulties [7] to encourage social interaction [8,9] and provide verbal and/or physical encouragement [10]. One of the challenges for such applications is how to make the humanoid robots perform different human movements naturally.…”