Abstract
Therapeutic pet robots designed to help humans with various medical conditions could play a vital role in physiological, psychological and social-interaction interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this paper, we report our findings from a robot-assisted therapeutic study conducted over seven weeks to investigate the changes in stress levels of children with ASD. For this study, we used the parrot-inspired therapeutic robot, KiliRo, we developed and investigated urinary and salivary samples of participating children to report changes in stress levels before and after interacting with the robot. This is a pioneering human-robot interaction study to investigate the effects of robot-assisted therapy using salivary samples. The results show that the bio-inspired robot-assisted therapy can significantly help reduce the stress levels of children with ASD.
Highlights
The rapid increase in the number of children with autism around the world is becoming noticeable worldwide, putting a serious pressure on the human society to develop modern technological solutions to improve the lives of these individuals with autism
We have developed a parrot-inspired robot, KiliRo and validated the merits of our robot in reducing stress levels and improving physiological conditions with a group of seven children identified with autism over a period of 49 days
We investigated the changes in stress levels of participating children after interacting with the robot through urinary and salivary tests
Summary
The rapid increase in the number of children with autism around the world is becoming noticeable worldwide, putting a serious pressure on the human society to develop modern technological solutions to improve the lives of these individuals with autism. Robot therapy for improving the psychological, physiological, and social interaction abilities of children with autism is finding new directions in recent years. Biologically inspired robots were able to help increase the interaction interest and learning ability of children with autism. A seal-like robot has reported success in improving social interaction abilities through various studies [3]-[5]. Probo is an imaginary animal-like robot used in autism therapy to improve social interaction and reduce stress [6]. Researchers have used Nao robot in autism therapy giving various benefits such as improving learning, social interaction and joint exercise [7][8].
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