Virtual Assistive Robots for Play, Learning, and Cognitive Development

Abstract

ABSTRACT Previous studies have demonstrated that Lego robots can be used to enable children with motor impairments to actively participate in play and academic activities. Additionally, by appropriately designing the activities and observing children’s performance, it is possible to assess children’s cognitive skills. In this work we developed physical and virtual robot scenarios as a first step towards the evaluation if the same benefits for children could be obtained using virtual robots in a simulated environment. Our study with ten adult participants without disabilities showed that the virtual robot was easier to control than the physical one. INTRODUCTION Children who have movement disorders such as cerebral palsy may have difficulty in manipulating objects, and this can compromise the quality of play and learning of skills [1]. Consequently these children may be perceived as being more developmentally delayed than they actually are, leading to reduced expectations on the part of teachers, clinicians and parents. Using robots controlled by the children provides an opportunity to manipulate real objects and engage in play activities, thus increasing the opportunities to learn cognitive, social, motor and linguistic skills [2]. Poletz, Encarnacao, Adams, and Cook [3] evaluated the ages when typically developing children demonstrate basic skills necessary to control robots and other assistive technology, such as scanning access methods to augmentative and alternative communication devices. Eighteen children in the age ranges 3 years ± 3 months, 4 years ± 3 months and 5 years ± 3 months participated in the study. They controlled the Lego(TM) Mindstorms RCX 2.0 robot using 3 switches and a switch adapted infrared controller. The children were observed performing different play activities with the robot from which it was possible to see if they demonstrated cause and effect, negation, binary choice, and sequencing skills. The study showed that children demonstrate skills according to their age level. These robot skills may be used as a proxy measure of cognitive skills for children who are untestable with standardized tests. However, cost and hardware availability may be limitations for widespread use of the robots so the purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using a virtual assistive robot. The objective was to develop simulated and real scenarios in which children could control the virtual and physical robots using switches and then test whether the virtual robot provided the same control experience compared to the physical one. If the answer is yes, then future studies should investigate if a virtual robot has the same performance in helping children with disabilities to play, learn, and develop their cognitive ability as in previous studies.