Using a humanoid robot as the promoter of the interaction with children in the context of educational games

Abstract

Society should care about those with special needs. Part of a proper care involves the development of new technologies and devices aiming at improving their quality of life. Research conducted at universities on this subject should be followed by the industrial development of commercial products and governmental institutions may play an important role by establishing conditions ensuring that the results are made available to those who need them. This paper presents the details of a system, still at the early stages of research level, aimed at helping children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It uses ZECA, a humanoid robot Zeno R-50, acting as the promoter of the interaction with children, by teaching colours and geometric figures in the context of two educational game scenarios: identification of five geometric figures and identification of five colours. So far, the system was tested in a school environment with typically developing children, in order to validate the experimental setup and the game design. The results obtained in these tests allowed optimizing the system before starting the work in elementary schools with children with ASD, which is the next step in the research.