Towards the Applicability of NAO Robot for Children with Autism in Pakistan

Abstract

In this paper, we present a HRI study that reports on the potential of NAO as a socially assistive robot in Pakistan. Our findings generated through interviewing 2 parents and 5 teachers on the plausibility of using NAO robot as an interaction partner show that both groups welcomed the use of NAO at schools. They, however, were sceptical due to missing NAO's facial expressions and certain body parts such as nose and lips. They also emphasised the importance of creating natural text to speech interface for the Urdu Language. Our findings taken from 7 autistic children to measure their level of social interaction during HRI revealed that children positively engaged with the NAO robot and showed a significant number of both verbal and non-verbal behaviours.

10 Years of Human-NAO Interaction Research: A Scoping Review

“…As a viable approach to autism treatment, robot-mediated autism intervention is designed to improve children's verbal and nonverbal behaviours as well as social skills. Levels of autism are known to be the most defining factor that accounts for different social interaction experiences and engagement rates (Ahmad et al, 2017). So far, the autism studies with NAO found that it has a great potential in helping children with autism to maintain eye contact (Anzalone et al, 2015), prefer specific instructions over spontaneity (Arent and Kruk-Lasocka, 2019) and augment communication skills (Hamid et al, 2013).…”

“…Additionally, the human-like appearance and nonjudgemental characteristics of NAO are highly appreciated by users (Henkel et al, 2019;Olde Keizer et al, 2019). Users would like NAO to be more emotionally expressive, responsive, and have a natural voice and gesturing (Anastasiou et al, 2013;Ahmad et al, 2017). Authors used a variety of questionnaires to evaluate NAO's characteristics and performance based on: anthropomorphism (Zlotowski et al, 2014;Kraus et al, 2016), user experience (Alenljung et al, 2018;Olde Keizer et al, 2019), user acceptability (Ahmad et al, 2017), robot personality (Liles and Beer, 2015;Peters et al, 2017;Kraus et al, 2018), robot behaviors (Pan et al, 2013;Njeri et al, 2016;Rossi et al, 2019), user expectations and evaluation (Anastasiou et al, 2013;Henkel et al, 2019), and perceived trustworthiness (Jessup et al, 2019).…”

“…When compared to the virtual agent, users still favored NAO to be engaging and responsive (Artstein et al, 2017). Both teachers and students were comfortable with the use of NAO, yet they emphasised the need for facial expressions in NAO (Ahmad et al, 2017). Gender might influence how robots are perceived.…”

Social Robots: A Promising Tool to Support People with Autism. A Systematic Review of Recent Research and Critical Analysis from the Clinical Perspective

“…Autism severity is associated with a preference for the type of stimuli used in a reinforcement paradigm, with children of lower severity tending to prefer visual stimuli and children with milder severity favouring physical ones (Ali et al, 2021). It also appears that different levels of severity are linked to varying levels of engagement during interactions with the robot, as children with more severe symptoms exhibit fewer instances of eye gaze and facial expressions (Ahmad et al, 2017). Individuals with higher severity levels also display lower levels of positive affect during these interactions (van den , though they may experience improved engagement across sessions .…”