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Humanoid Robot as a Teacher’s Assistant: Helping Children with Autism to Learn Social and Academic Skills

DOI:10.1007/s10846-019-01075-1
Authors:
Uvais Qidwai at Qatar University
Uvais Qidwai
Saad Bin Abul Kashem at AFG College with the University of Aberdeen, Qatar
Saad Bin Abul Kashem
  • AFG College with the University of Aberdeen, Qatar
Olcay Conor
Olcay Conor
Olcay Conor
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Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is becoming a growing concern worldwide. Parents are often not aware of the different nature of children with ASD and attempt to treat him/her the same way as other children. However, that causes more and more isolation of such children from the social interactions around them, resulting in more secluded and people-phobic behaviors. Nevertheless, similar to other children, children with ASD also like to play with toys. This observation has led to the use of toys in a way that mere playful activities could become sources of learning and skill-building, somewhat serving or assisting in the role of a human teacher. Robots have been observed to be fascinating for all children and compensating for a human companion to a certain extent. In this paper, a short study has been presented involving a humanoid robot programmed for a number of teaching and therapeutic behaviors, such as exercises, singing, explaining, and playing with children. Tests were performed on a small group of 15 children with ASD (ages 7–11) using these activities at a local school for children with special needs for a number of weeks. The objective of the study was to quantify the improvement in a number of behavior and learning parameters when children performed the activities with NAO robot present with the teacher, as opposed to the same type of activities performed by the teacher alone. The performance improvement was quantified in terms of the NAO robot activity as independent variable, and following dependent behavioral variables observed from the responses of children: (a) number of trials, (b) activity response time, (c) response type, and (d) behavior retention. Quantified findings from these tests are reported in this paper against average performance values (based on teachers and psychologists’ evaluation). The results of the study have been found to be very encouraging which demonstrates the capability of robotic toys to improve the learning process for children with ASD. The results of this study also encourage the low-cost development and usage of such robotic toy systems for teaching and therapeutic applications that help such children to become better members of society.
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Humanoid Robot as a Teacher’s Assistant: Helping Children
with Autism to Learn Social and Academic Skills
Uvais Qidwai
1
&Saad Bin Abul Kashem
2
&Olcay Conor
3
Received: 23 February 2019 /Accepted: 1 August 2019
#Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD) is becoming a growing concern worldwide. Parents are often not aware of the differentnature
of children with ASD and attempt to treathim/her the same way as other children. However, that causesmore and moreisolation
of such children from the social interactions around them, resulting in more secluded and people-phobic behaviors. Nevertheless,
similar to other children, children with ASD also like to play with toys. This observation has led to the use of toys in a way that
mere playfulactivitiescould becomesources of learning and skill-building, somewhat serving or assisting inthe role of a human
teacher. Robots have been observed to be fascinating for all children and compensating for a human companion to a certain
extent. In this paper, a short study has been presented involving a humanoid robot programmed for a number of teaching and
therapeutic behaviors, such as exercises, singing, explaining, and playing with children. Tests were performed on a small group of
15 children with ASD (ages 7–11) using these activities at a local school for children with special needs for a number of weeks.
The objective of the study was to quantify the improvement in a number of behavior and learning parameters when children
performed the activities with NAO robot present with the teacher, as opposed to the same type of activities performed by the
teacher alone. The performance improvement was quantified in terms of the NAO robot activity as independent variable, and
following dependent behavioral variables observed from the responses of children: (a) number of trials, (b) activity response time,
(c) response type, and (d) behavior retention. Quantified findings from these tests are reported in this paper against average
performance values (based on teachers and psychologists’evaluation). The results of the study have been found to be very
encouraging which demonstrates the capability of robotic toys to improve the learning process for children with ASD. The results
of this study also encourage the low-cost development and usage of such robotic toy systems for teaching and therapeutic
applications that help such children to become better members of society.
Keywords AutismSpectrumdisorder(ASD) .HumanrobotInterface(HRI) .NAOrobot .Interactivegames .Robot-basedgames
1 Introduction
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are usually defined as
neurodevelopmental disorders in which a person has ab-
normal social interaction, impaired communication, lan-
guage difficulties and lack imitational coordination [1].
ASD manifests in diverse actions, behaviors, and appear-
ances, making each individual child a unique experience.
However, certain collective trades occur commonly in a
larger number of children. These trades usually include
behavioral abnormalities in terms of social interaction, de-
livery speech impediments, recognition difficulties, and
expression inability. Hence, simple tasks that are essential
for learning, such as following instructions, focusing on an
activity, and attention spans, are extremely challenging for
children with ASD, resulting in learning difficulties.
The conventional therapeutic methods include pictorial
tools, e.g. cards, flip charts, posters, etc. The research commu-
nity has also been active in using a variety of different elec-
tronic tools and toys, e.g., tablet PCs, mobile phone apps, and
computer games, etc. The underlying objectives of the studies
conducted using these tools is to improve focus, hand-eye
coordination and memory retention in children with ASD.
During past 5 years, several articles have been published to
report experimentation with toys with smarter interfaces and
robots. Compared to gaming applications in PCs, robots are
*SaadBinAbulKashem
saadaip@gmail.com
1
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University,
Doha, Qatar
2
Qatar Armed Forces-Academic Bridge Program, Qatar Foundation,
Doha, Qatar
3
Step by Step School, Doha, Qatar
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-019-01075-1
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (2020) 98:759–770
/Published online: 16 August 2019
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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... In turn, the child is more likely to interact with the robot and therefore learn from the robot. Additionally, because robots can be extremely repetitive and predictable, it is easier for children with ASD to understand "how to perceive human and understand human emotions" [12]. Kim [8] found that the teacher can elicit more interaction from the autistic children by using the social robot as a partner, and that the robot partner can increase student interaction more than the adult partner counterpart. ...
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