Study on Social Interaction between Children with Autism and Humanoid Robot NAO

Abstract

Autism cannot run away from their triangle deficits: social, communication and stereotyped behaviour. There is no cure for autism or any definitive treatment to treat the core symptoms of this developmental disorder. However, the deficits can be minimized by maximize their learning through behavioural therapy and educational intervention. Nowadays, the methods in the rehabilitation of autism have been upgraded by the innovation of humanoid robots, in particular the humanoid robot NAO. In this study, NAO has being programmed using Choregraphe as programming tool to develop lesson modules for children with autism to practice their social interaction skill. This paper focuses specifically on social interaction subscale to observe the behaviour of the autistic children during interaction with the humanoid robot NAO. The observation is based on six items referenced from the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale-second edition (GARS-2). The use of humanoid robot NAO in the rehabilitation of autistic children is expected to help them to interact and practice their social traits just like normal children. The results evidently showed that children with autism are positively affected by NAO by giving encouraging responses in social interaction when interacting with the robot. Two-way communication between the child and robot in real time significantly give positive impact in the responses towards the robot.

Animation, Theory of Mind and Humanoid Robots: Creating a Social Robot Video Task

“…They can't stretch, bounce or glide across the space. However, humanoid robots such as NAO, from SoftBank Robotics, have been successfully applied to therapeutic interventions with children with ASD [19,20]. NAO has 25 degrees of freedom which allows for the mobility necessary to design various narratives.…”

Medical and Assistive Robotics in Global Health

“…The robot's ability to monitor the patient movement is important to ensure compliance while its ability to give feedback and supporting cueing is important to ensure engagement. Studies show these robots are able to motivate and engage the patient to continue to pursue therapy outside hospital settings (Matarić et al 2007;Miskam et al 2013;Fitter et al 2020). Examples of robots used in this manner are the NAO (Softbank, Japan), Pepper (Softbank, Japan), Baxter (Rethink Robotics, USA), and Bandit (BlueSky Robotics, USA).…”

A Control Architecture of Robot-Assisted Intervention for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…The NAO robot is a humanoid robot, it has an appealing appearance and is easy to be accepted by children. In previous studies, the NAO robot has been successfully applied to training tasks for children with ASD and achieved ideal results [25][26][27][28].…”