Humanoid Social Robot for Interaction with Autistic Children

Lee, Jia Fei (2020) Humanoid Social Robot for Interaction with Autistic Children. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

The aim for this research project is to develop a humanoid social robot to interact with the children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and analyze the improvement of the ASD children on their social behaviors after interacting with the robot. Besides, also to prove the effectiveness of Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) in reducing symptoms of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) was a complex developmental disability that affects an individual’s socialization and communication skills. According to Centre Disease Control (CDC) had been estimated that 1 in 68 of newborn diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and more boys are diagnosed than girls. Therefore, early intervention could be a good approach to help the children that suffering in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One of the therapies would be Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) that carried out by the social robot. In this research project, a humanoid robot will be developed and given the ability to make interaction with the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. The design of the robot appearance will be using 3D printing and the head of the robot will use an LCD display screen to display the facial expression of the robot. Then, Raspberry Pi controller will be used as the main controller for the screen, speaker and servo motors. Moreover, in order to allow a more flexible movement, 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) robotic arms were constructed. The robot will be program to perform simple gestures to teach children on correct social behaviors like shake hand and waving hand saying Hello and Good-Bye. It was also able to provide Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) and social story together to help on improving the targeted social skills for the autism children. Three types of the social story were developed which is greetings, sharing toys and saying Thank You which three of them were targeting different social skills. A few sets of social tasks had been developed based on the targeted social skill inside the social story to allow the children to exercise. The children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will be judged on how well they follow instructions before and after the sessions. An experiment was design and 6 participants have participated in this experiment. There were separated into two groups, one is taught by human therapists while others group taught by the humanoid social robot. Last but not least, the comparison on the result obtained for the control and Robot-Assisted Group (RAT) was shown that Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) had a better effect on improving the social skill of the autism children compared to human therapists. As conclusion, since Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) had a better effect on improving the social skill of the autism children. Therefore, it could be suggested that as a solution to reduce the symptoms of the autism children.