Humanoid Robot Enhancing Social and Communication Skills of Autistic Children: Review

Abstract

Autism is a neurological disease that affects people’s social, communicational and mental abilities. This makes it difficult for them to express themselves and integrate seamlessly with other people and society as a whole. With the number of autism cases steadily increasing, researchers and caretakers alike around the world are working on finding a teaching technique to help with the therapy and education of autistic children. Due to the number of resources and expertise that are required for this operation, it has proven to be quite difficult to find such a teaching technique. The results of our literature survey also show that the USA has the most research in this field, followed by England and Spain. The aim of this paper is to study the interaction of autistic children with the humanoid robot NAO. Therefore, we developed different interactive activities and materials for testing the children’s attitude and engagement.  After careful observation and experimenting, it was found that the children were much more engaged and excited during the lessons that involved the robot. This can be attributed to its simple and toy-like nature, which makes the lessons more fun and exciting. The children were also more responsive, absorbed more information overall and were even willing to learn new subjects that they previously avoided.