Developmental Support Robotics for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Autism has problems in how to relate to and communicate with others, and is characterized by a weak ability to respond to stimuli from others and the environment, and a poor method of expression. In addition, it can be seen that the development of language ability and sociality is delayed or inferior compared with the children of healthy people. From viewpoint of clinical developmental psychology and applied behavior analysis, research to promote the development of language skills and so on is carried out by providing education and support tailored to the characteristics of autism for them. However, since autism has a strong commitment to specific things and rules, we think it is better to give education while giving the initiative to children. Therefore, we proposed a developmental support robotics that allows children to take control while promoting their development by letting the robot do the work instead of people. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of the developmental support by using a communication robot to actually interact with a child with autism.