Related papers: Advancing Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy: A Novel A…
For a period of three weeks in June 2021, we embedded a social robot (Softbank Pepper) in a Special Educational Needs (SEN) school, with a focus on supporting the well-being of autistic children. Our methodology to design and embed the…
Wheelchair-mounted robotic arms (and other assistive robots) should help their users perform everyday tasks. One way robots can provide this assistance is shared autonomy. Within shared autonomy, both the human and robot maintain control…
Motor challenges are prevalent among autistic children, and games are able to simultaneously produce clinically meaningful results and provide a motivating context, but many current solutions are too rigid. We conducted a two-phase…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (autism) is a neurodevelopmental delay which affects at least 1 in 44 children. Like many neurological disorder phenotypes, the diagnostic features are observable, can be tracked over time, and can be managed or…
Trust plays a central role in human--robot collaboration, yet its formation is rarely examined under the constraints of fully autonomous interaction. This pilot study investigated how interaction policy influences trust during in-person…
Shared autonomy integrates user input with robot autonomy in order to control a robot and help the user to complete a task. Our work aims to improve the performance of such a human-robot team: the robot tries to guide the human towards an…
The brain's attention system is a complex and adaptive network of brain regions that enables individuals to interact effectively with their surroundings and perform complex tasks. This system involves the coordination of various brain…
Socially aware robot navigation is a planning paradigm where the robot navigates in human environments and tries to adhere to social constraints while interacting with the humans in the scene. These navigation strategies were further…
Previous studies have suggested that being imitated by an adult is an effective intervention with children with autism and developmental delay. The purpose of this study is to investigate if an imitation game with a robot can arise interest…
Emerging applications of robotics, and concerns about their impact, require the research community to put human-centric objectives front-and-center. To meet this challenge, we advocate an interdisciplinary approach, socially cognizant…
The demand for social robots in fields like healthcare, education, and entertainment increases due to their emotional adaptation features. These robots leverage multimodal communication, incorporating speech, facial expressions, and…
In this article, we introduce a novel problem of audio-visual autism behavior recognition, which includes social behavior recognition, an essential aspect previously omitted in AI-assisted autism screening research. We define the task at…
Shared control systems aim to combine human and robot abilities to improve task performance. However, achieving optimal performance requires that the robot's level of assistance adjusts the operator's cognitive workload in response to the…
The success of employment is highly related to a job seeker's capability of communicating and collaborating with others. While leveraging one's network during the job-seeking process is intuitive to the neurotypical, this can be challenging…
The current spread of social and assistive robotics applications is increasingly highlighting the need for robots that can be easily taught and interacted with, even by users with no technical background. Still, it is often difficult to…
This extended abtract describes the preliminary qualitative results coming from a therapeutic laboratory focused on the use of the Pepper robot to promote autonomies and functional acquisitions in highly functioning (Asperger) children with…
Family-school partnerships (FSP) are critical to children's development, yet families often face barriers such as time constraints, fragmented communication, and limited opportunities for meaningful engagement. As a step toward facilitating…
Real-time collaboration with humans poses challenges due to the different behavior patterns of humans resulting from diverse physical constraints. Existing works typically focus on learning safety constraints for collaboration, or how to…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which is a neuro development disorder, is often accompanied by sensory issues such an over sensitivity or under sensitivity to sounds and smells or touch. Although its main cause is genetics in nature, early…
Autism spectrum disorder ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with challenges in communication, social interaction, and repetitive behaviors. Getting a clear diagnosis for a child is necessary for starting early intervention and…