Scenarios of robot-assisted play for children with cognitive and physical disabilities

Abstract

This article presents a novel set of ten play scenarios for robot-assisted play for children with special needs. This set of scenarios is one of the key outcomes of the IROMEC project that investigated how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents etc.). The target user groups in the project were children with Mild Mental Retardation, 1 children with Severe Motor Impairment and children with Autism. The play scenarios were developed against specific educational and therapeutic objectives that were discussed with panels of experts (teachers, therapists, parents) in various countries, during several user panel meetings for each of the above mentioned target user groups. These objectives were classified with reference to the ICF-CY, the International Classification of Functioningversion for Children and Youth. The article presents a detailed description of the play scenarios, each with its relevant educational and therapeutic objectives in five key developmental areas (i.e. sensory development, communication and interaction, cognitive development, motor development and social and emotional development). While the play scenarios described in this paper originally were developed for and tested with the above user groups and with the IROMEC robot, the play scenarios can potentially be applied to other user groups and to a wide range of other applications involving human-robot interaction using different robotic toys.

Cognitive rehabilitation system for children with autism spectrum disorder using serious games: A pilot study

“…Both professionals and family members of children with ASD work and seek alternatives so that people with ASD may improve on their weaknesses day by day, thus ensuring that they can lead an independent life [10,19]. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess how a system designed for people with ASD can help them achieve this objective, incorporating this system as a tool into their cognitive rehabilitation.…”

“…This means, the user only works with the application, missing the interaction with someone else. This interaction allows to work social skills [19].…”

“…(2) Robots: robotized toys practiced and worked both on social skills and new skills. Besides, the collaborative games may be learned through these robots [19], and these types of system may help to improve fine motor skills such as those in which the use of the wrist is involved [20]. Robot toys can help special needs children to work on social skills, learn new skills and discover the different game modes-in other words, show them that collaborative games also exist [21].…”

Tactile Interactions with a Humanoid Robot: Novel Play Scenario Implementations with Children with Autism

“…In previous work by the authors (and as part of a larger consortium in the FP6 project IROMEC [34]) user requirements, therapeutic and educational objectives and play scenarios were developed in consultation with panels of experts and user studies were conducted over several years. One of the outcomes of that project was a set of novel play scenarios encouraging children with learning difficulties, children with severe motor impaiment and children with autism to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play using a nonhumanoid mobile robot [35].…”

“…7 below we can see on the left how CD demonstrates on himself and showing the experimenter the correct sequence of the robot's body parts to touch, and on the right we can see how this role has been swapped, and the experimenter in his turn, shows the child the correct sequence of the robot's body part to touch. In recent years there have been many examples of robots being used in play activities of children with special needs, for therapeutic or educational purposes [21,35,46-51] to mention just a few. As mentioned in [35], these robots have shown to be useful in promoting spontaneous play in children with developmental disorders, engaging them in playful interactions thus pointing out the need for a shared framework that would help the process of developing play activities against therapeutic objectives.…”