ABSTRACT
Contents Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 19.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
19.1.1 Robotic platform development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 19.1.2 Patterns of robot-children interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
19.2 Representative robot-mediated skill training for children with ASD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 19.2.1 Robot-mediated joint attention training . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
19.2.1.1 System development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 19.2.1.2 User study results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 19.2.1.3 Habituation study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
19.2.2 Imitation learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 19.2.2.1 System development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 19.2.2.2 User study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 19.2.2.3 User study results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
19.3 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 19.3.1 Increasing the autonomous level of the robotic systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 19.3.2 Unrestricted interaction environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 19.3.3 Large group study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 19.3.4 Robot-mediated intervention generalization. . . . . . . . . 413
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Abstract Robot-mediated intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been investigated for decades, building tremendous momentum toward further technical development and psychological understanding. The developed robotic platforms for children with ASD possess more and more advanced hardware design and interaction patterns. In this chapter, we review representative robotic studies that have been conducted to help children with ASD. It has been shown that robots can catch and hold the attention of children with ASD, and be used to teach them social communication skills. In addition, we provide detailed examples to illustrate the design and development of effective robotmediated intervention systems that have been applied to teach children with ASD joint attention and imitation skills. Finally, we discuss a few important research directions that need further exploration.
