Young Children Using Assistive Robotics for Discovery and Control

The physical manipulation of objects is a major contributing factor in the develop­ ment of cognitive and language skills in very young children. Children are active learners, and development is an interac­ tive process between the child and the environment. Very young children face a critical task in learning to recognize the relationships between their actions and the effects of those actions on the envi­ ronment (Hanson & Hanline, 1984). In developing these relationships, the young child learns to initiate and exert control over both social and nonsocial aspects of his or her environment. For a child with a severe developmental disability, this im­ portant learning of cause and effect and the development of a personal orienta­ tion as an active agent in the environ­ ment are far more challenging than for children without disabilities. For these reasons, the direct manipu­ lation of objects with an assistive robotic system that is controlled by a child is a promising area to explore with children with severe manipulation disabilities (Howell & Hay, 1989). The disabling con­ ditions that are associated with poor con­ trol, or little or no use, of the upper extremities include cerebral palsy, arthro­ gryposis, spinal muscular atrophy, mus­ cular dystrophies, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, poliomyelitis, spinal cord injury, head injury, and locked-in syndrome. The number of people with these conditions who also have severe manipulation disabilities in the United States is estimated to be at least 150,000 (Stanger & Cawley, 1996). As a first step in the process of ex­ ploring the use of assistive robotics with young children with severe disabilities. Cook and his research team developed a robotic system that incorporated a com­ mercially available robotic arm (Cook, Hoseit, Liu, Lee, & Zenteno, 1988; Cook, Liu, & Hoseit, 1990; Hoseit, Liu, & Cook, 1986). The primary questions addressed by the initial research were whether a very young child would interact with a robotic arm and whether that interaction would involve the purposeful use of the arm as a tool to accomplish some desired