Examine the potential of robots to teach autistic children emotional concepts: A preliminary study

Abstract

In this preliminary study, we developed a set of humanoid robot body movements which are used to express four basic emotional concepts and a set of learning activities. The goal of this study is to collect feedback from subject matter experts and validate our design. We will integrate them to improve the designs and guide autistic children to learn emotional concepts. To validate our designs, we conducted an online survey among general public people and four in-person interviews among subject matter experts. Results show that the body movement Happiness and Sadness could express emotions accurately, while the Anger and Fear movements need more improvements. According to the subject matter experts, this robot mediate instruction is engaging and appropriate. To better match autistic children, the instructional content should be tailored for individual learners.