Impacts of Socially Assistive Robots on Improving the Quality of Life in Children with Autism

Abstract

Statistics have shown an endemic worldwide increase of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) since the 1960s. Autistic disorders are characterized by three major behavioral disorders: impaired social interaction, impaired communication, and impaired imagination and social creativity. The usage of Socially Assistive Robots (SAR) in autism screening and treatment has been increasing in recent years. In this chapter, after reviewing the most important findings of using SAR in autism area, I present some of our recent findings on the clinical application of two interactive social humanoid robots (i.e., NAO and ALICE with the Iranian names of Nima and Mina) as medical assistants in the treatment and education of children with autism in Iran in order to improve their social and cognitive skills. We, i.e., my colleagues and I, have designed and implemented a set of robot-assisted therapeutic games based on the regular tasks done in autism therapy centers with the following topics: (a) Investigation of social robots’ acceptability and effect on improving the fine/gross movement imitation of children with autism, (b) Individual clinical intervention program: Exploring the effect of a robot-assisted music-education program on children with ASD's fundamental knowledge of music and their socio-cognitive skills improvement, (c) Group clinical intervention program: The impact of humanoid robots on improving the social and cognitive skills of children with high-functioning autism, and (d) Human-Robot interaction for autism treatment on a pair of twins with autism, one of whom was high-functioning and the other low-functioning. During our experimental setup, the results indicated that our social robots, Nima and Mina, were accepted by ∼70% of the participants with ASD as a communication tool from the first interaction. We also observed some improvement in joint attention and fine movement imitation skills (especially during the music-education program) of both the high-functioning and low-functioning subjects with ASD. It was observed that the high-functioning children's social skills improved due to the robot-assisted group therapy sessions, while the stereotyped behaviors of the low-functioning subjects decreased somewhat during the course of this program. Our hope is such studies aid in effective improvement in autism treatment as well as reduces its applicable costs in the world.