Head Impact Severity Measures for Small Social Robots Thrown During Meltdown in Autism

Abstract

Social robots have gained a lot of attention recently as they have been reported to be effective in supporting therapeutic services for children with autism. However, children with autism may exhibit a multitude of challenging behaviors that could be harmful to themselves and to others around them. Furthermore, social robots are meant to be companions and to elicit certain social behaviors. Hence, the presence of a social robot during the occurrence of challenging behaviors might increase any potential harm. In this paper, we identified harmful scenarios that might emanate between a child and a social robot due to the manifestation of challenging behaviors. We then quantified the harm levels based on severity indices for one of the challenging behaviors (i.e. throwing of objects). Our results showed that the overall harm levels based on the selected severity indices are relatively low compared to their respective thresholds. However, our investigation of harm due to throwing of a small social robot to the head revealed that it could potentially cause tissue injuries, subconcussive or even concussive events in extreme cases. The existence of such behaviors must be accounted for and considered when developing interactive social robots to be deployed for children with autism.

Safety experiments for small robots investigating the potential of soft materials in mitigating the harm to the head due to impacts

“…The experimental setup has been validated in giving comparable results to those of previous studies under similar testing conditions. More detailed description of the experimental setup can be viewed in our earlier studies [3][26] [27].…”

“…This frequency is believed to be at which the high rate of challenging behaviors might occur [28]. Safety experiments for small robots investigating the potential of soft materials in mitigating the harm to the head due to impacts A PREPRINT Figure 2: The experimental setup used in this study [3]. Safety experiments for small robots investigating the potential of soft materials in mitigating the harm to the head due to impacts A PREPRINT Figure 3: Sample of the experiments conducted.…”

“…Most notably is the application of social robots in therapy sessions with children with autism, which has been reported to improve the overall outcomes [2]. However, such children exhibit a multitude of challenging behaviors that could raise some safety concerns when a robot is present in their vicinity [3]. The occurrence rates of challenging behaviors are high (e.g.…”

Influence of the shape and mass of a small robot when thrown to a dummy human head

“…This opens up new possibilities in the application of robots in new areas [1]. These developments have implications and raise some safety concerns [2].…”

“…kicking, throwing, and banging [32]). For instance, a thrown small robot that hits the head might cause subconcussion or superficial injuries [2]. There is a need to evaluate social robots to achieve safe physical human-robot interaction during such scenarios.…”