Robots for use in autism research.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of lifelong disabilities that affect people's ability to communicate and to understand social cues. Research into applying robots as therapy tools has shown that robots seem to improve engagement and elicit novel social behaviors from people (particularly children and teenagers) with autism. Robot therapy for autism has been explored as one of the first application domains in the field of socially assistive robotics (SAR), which aims to develop robots that assist people with special needs through social interactions. In this review, we discuss the past decade's work in SAR systems designed for autism therapy by analyzing robot design decisions, human-robot interactions, and system evaluations. We conclude by discussing challenges and future trends for this young but rapidly developing research area.

[1]  L A Redefer,et al.  Brief report: Pet-facilitated therapy with autistic children , 1989, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[2]  D Strickland,et al.  Virtual reality for the treatment of autism. , 1997, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[3]  Virtual Reality in Neuro-Psycho-Physiology. Cognitive, clinical and methodological issues in assessment and rehabilitation. , 1997, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[4]  Stefan Schaal,et al.  Is imitation learning the route to humanoid robots? , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[5]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Getting Humanoids to Move and Imitate , 2000, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[6]  F. Volkmar,et al.  Brief Report: Interrater Reliability of Clinical Diagnosis and DSM-IV Criteria for Autistic Disorder: Results of the DSM-IV Autism Field Trial , 2000, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[7]  H. Kozima,et al.  A Robot that Learns to Communicate with Human Caregivers , 2001 .

[8]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Can Social Interaction Skills Be Taught by a Social Agent? The Role of a Robotic Mediator in Autism Therapy , 2001, Cognitive Technology.

[9]  M. Silver,et al.  Evaluation of a New Computer Intervention to Teach People with Autism or Asperger Syndrome to Recognize and Predict Emotions in Others , 2001, Autism : the international journal of research and practice.

[10]  François Michaud,et al.  Roball, the Rolling Robot , 2002, Auton. Robots.

[11]  P. Mitchell,et al.  The potential of virtual reality in social skills training for people with autistic spectrum disorders. , 2002, Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR.

[12]  François Martin,et al.  Animal-Assisted Therapy for Children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders , 2002, Western journal of nursing research.

[13]  K. Maich,et al.  Applied Behavior Analysis , 2018, Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology.

[14]  Aude Billard,et al.  Robota: Clever toy and educational tool , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[15]  D. Massaro,et al.  Development and Evaluation of a Computer-Animated Tutor for Vocabulary and Language Learning in Children with Autism , 2003, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[16]  Illah R. Nourbakhsh,et al.  A survey of socially interactive robots , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[17]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Social interactions in HRI: the robot view , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[18]  A. Whiten,et al.  A Systematic Review of Action Imitation in Autistic Spectrum Disorder , 2004, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[19]  A. Billard,et al.  Effects of repeated exposure to a humanoid robot on children with autism , 2004 .

[20]  O. Hetzroni,et al.  Effects of a Computer-Based Intervention Program on the Communicative Functions of Children with Autism , 2004, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[21]  R. Tuchman,et al.  [Autism and pervasive developmental disorders]. , 2004, Jornal de pediatria.

[22]  B. Robins,et al.  Robot-mediated joint attention in children with autism : A case study in robot-human interaction , 2004 .

[23]  Hideki Kozima,et al.  Interactive robots for communication-care: a case-study in autism therapy , 2005, ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005..

[24]  Michio Okada,et al.  Child–robot interaction mediated by building blocks: from field observations in a public space , 2006, Artificial Life and Robotics.

[25]  Aude Billard,et al.  Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children with autism: can a small humanoid robot help encourage social interaction skills? , 2005, Universal Access in the Information Society.

[26]  D. Feil-Seifer,et al.  Defining socially assistive robotics , 2005, 9th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, 2005. ICORR 2005..

[27]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  Quantitative metrics of social response for autism diagnosis , 2005, ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005..

[28]  Michio Okada,et al.  Minimal design for human–agent communication , 2006, Artificial Life and Robotics.

[29]  Michio Okada,et al.  How can robots facilitate social interaction of children with autism?: Possibleimplications for educational environments , 2005 .

[30]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  How Social Robots Will Help Us to Diagnose, Treat, and Understand Autism , 2005, ISRR.

[31]  Dominic Létourneau,et al.  Autonomous spherical mobile robot for child-development studies , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[32]  D. De Rossi,et al.  Imitation and Learning of the Emotional Behaviour : Towards an Android-based Treatment for People with Autism , 2006 .

[33]  Rosalind W. Picard,et al.  Affective Computing and Autism , 2006, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[34]  Aude Billard,et al.  Incremental learning of gestures by imitation in a humanoid robot , 2007, 2007 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[35]  François Michaud,et al.  Assistive Technologies and Children-Robot Interaction , 2007, AAAI Spring Symposium: Multidisciplinary Collaboration for Socially Assistive Robotics.

[36]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  The Grand Challenges in Socially Assistive Robotics , 2007 .

[37]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  Socially assistive robotics [Grand Challenges of Robotics] , 2007, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

[38]  Marcello Ferro,et al.  Human-Robot Interaction in Autism: FACE, an Android-based Social Therapy , 2007, RO-MAN 2007 - The 16th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

[39]  C. Johnson,et al.  Identification and Evaluation of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders , 2007, Pediatrics.

[40]  H. Kozima,et al.  Children-robot interaction: a pilot study in autism therapy. , 2007, Progress in brain research.

[41]  Maja J. Matarić,et al.  B3IA: A control architecture for autonomous robot-assisted behavior intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders , 2008, RO-MAN 2008 - The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

[42]  François Michaud,et al.  Exploring the use of a mobile robot as an imitation agent with children with low-functioning autism , 2008, Auton. Robots.

[43]  H. Krebs,et al.  Effects of Robot-Assisted Therapy on Upper Limb Recovery After Stroke: A Systematic Review , 2008, Neurorehabilitation and neural repair.

[44]  Peter H. Kahn,et al.  Robotic animals might aid in the social development of children with autism , 2008, 2008 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[45]  Changchun Liu,et al.  Online Affect Detection and Robot Behavior Adaptation for Intervention of Children With Autism , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[46]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Toward Socially Assistive Robotics for Augmenting Interventions for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders , 2008, ISER.

[47]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  From Isolation to Communication: A Case Study Evaluation of Robot Assisted Play for Children with Autism with a Minimally Expressive Humanoid Robot , 2009, 2009 Second International Conferences on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions.

[48]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Therapeutic and educational objectives in robot assisted play for children with autism , 2009, RO-MAN 2009 - The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

[49]  Chrystopher L. Nehaniv,et al.  Title of paper : KASPAR – A Minimally Expressive Humanoid Robot for Human-Robot Interaction Research , 2009 .

[50]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Collaborating with Kaspar: Using an autonomous humanoid robot to foster cooperative dyadic play among children with autism , 2010, 2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots.

[51]  Daniel J. Ricks,et al.  Trends and considerations in robot-assisted autism therapy , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[52]  Kogan,et al.  Autism Spectrum Disorders Diagnosis , Prevalence , and Services for Children and Families , 2010 .

[53]  Uttama Lahiri,et al.  An Approach to the Design of Socially Acceptable Robots for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders , 2010, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[54]  H. Faras,et al.  Autism spectrum disorders , 2010, Annals of Saudi medicine.

[55]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Automated detection and classification of positive vs. negative robot interactions with children with autism using distance-based features , 2011, 2011 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[56]  Lauren M. Schmitt,et al.  The Clinical Use of Robots for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Critical Review. , 2012, Research in autism spectrum disorders.

[57]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  Bridging the research gap , 2012, HRI 2012.

[58]  J D Humphrey,et al.  Continuum mixture models of biological growth and remodeling: past successes and future opportunities. , 2012, Annual review of biomedical engineering.