Why robots? A survey on the roles and benefits of social robots in the therapy of children with autism
It addresses the problem of improving therapy outcomes for children with autism by reviewing existing research, but it is incremental as it synthesizes prior studies without introducing new methods or data.
This survey investigates the use of social robots in therapy for children with autism, analyzing experimental data to categorize therapeutic roles and identify design features that enhance effectiveness in addressing social, emotional, and communication deficits.
This paper reviews the use of socially interactive robots to assist in the therapy of children with autism. The extent to which the robots were successful in helping the children in their social, emotional, and communication deficits was investigated. Child-robot interactions were scrutinized with respect to the different target behaviors that are to be elicited from a child during therapy. These behaviors were thoroughly examined with respect to a childs development needs. Most importantly, experimental data from the surveyed works were extracted and analyzed in terms of the target behaviors and how each robot was used during a therapy session to achieve these behaviors. The study concludes by categorizing the different therapeutic roles that these robots were observed to play, and highlights the important design features that enable them to achieve high levels of effectiveness in autism therapy.