How can robots facilitate social interaction of children with autism?: Possible implications for educational environments

Abstract

Children with autism have difficulties in social interaction with other people and much attention in recent years has been directed to robots as therapy tools. We studied the social interaction between children with autism and robots longitudinally to observe developmental changes in their performance. We observed children at a special school for six months and analyzed their performance with robots. The results showed that two children adapted to the experimental situations and developed interaction with the robots. This suggests that they changed their interaction with the robots from an object-like one into an agentlike one.