Touchscreen-Mediated Child-Robot Interactions Applied to ASD Therapy

Robots are finding increasing application in the domain of ASD therapy as they provide a number of advantageous properties such as replicability and controllable expressivity. In this abstract we introduce a role for touchscreens that act as mediating devices in therapeutic robot-child interactions. Informed by extensive work with neurotypical children in educational contexts, an initial study using a touchscreen mediator in support of robot-assisted ASD therapy was conducted to examine the feasibility of this approach, in so doing demonstrating how this application provides a number of technical and potentially therapeutic advantages.

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