Intervention of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in a New Perspective: A Review on the Deployment of Adaptive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) System in Enhancing Social Skill Impairments

Research in the area of Human-robot Interaction (HRI) has gained momentum in recent years. The robot-based intervention has now spread its wings to help the less fortunate specifically children who suffer from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These robot-based intervention studies utilized HRI in improving impaired skills, such as, social skills, motor skills, and behavior. Recently, robot-based therapies have shown encouraging outcomes in improving the social skills of Autism Spectrum Disorder Children (ASDC). Herein, this paper aims to review the studies of the use of adaptive HRI in improving social skills of ASDC. Due to rapid advancement in HRI studies, this paper limits the review from the past 10 years. The steps in the procedure, such as the choice of study participants and outcome measurements, are described in this paper. According to the analysis, all the studies deployed NAO robots as their HRI system. There was variability within the parameters measured to evaluate the efficacy of the HRI, however, the analysis discovered that robot-based interventions were practically helpful in enhancing the social skills for ASDC.