Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Jul;18(5):598-608.
doi: 10.1177/1362361313479454. Epub 2013 Oct 8.

Pilot clinical application of an adaptive robotic system for young children with autism

Esubalew Bekele  1 , Julie A Crittendon  1 , Amy Swanson  1 , Nilanjan Sarkar  1 , Zachary E Warren  2
Affiliations

Pilot clinical application of an adaptive robotic system for young children with autism

Esubalew Bekele et al. Autism. 2014 Jul.

Abstract

It has been argued that clinical applications of advanced technology may hold promise for addressing impairments associated with autism spectrum disorders. This pilot feasibility study evaluated the application of a novel adaptive robot-mediated system capable of both administering and automatically adjusting joint attention prompts to a small group of preschool children with autism spectrum disorders (n = 6) and a control group (n = 6). Children in both groups spent more time looking at the humanoid robot and were able to achieve a high level of accuracy across trials. However, across groups, children required higher levels of prompting to successfully orient within robot-administered trials. The results highlight both the potential benefits of closed-loop adaptive robotic systems as well as current limitations of existing humanoid-robotic platforms.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder; joint attention; robotics; technology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interests

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Apparatus and experiment room setup (not drawn to scale).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Humanoid-robot NAO utilized within protocol.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percentage of time looking toward robot and human administrators across trials.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Percentage of time spent looking at the administrator in both the human and the robot sessions for individual participants in (a) ASD group and (b) TD group. ASD: autism spectrum disorder; TD: typically developing.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Percentage of correct responses achieved at specific prompt levels by group and condition.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. American Psychiatric Association (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 2000. text rev.
    1. Annaz D, Campbell R, Coleman M, et al. Young children with autism spectrum disorder do not preferentially attend to biological motion. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 2012;42(3):401–408. - PubMed
    1. Bekele E, Lahiri U, Davidson J, et al. Proceedings of the 20th IEEE international symposium on robot man interaction. Piscataway, NJ: RO-MAN 2011 IEEE; 2011. Development of a novel robot-mediated adaptive response system for joint attention task for children with autism; pp. 276–281. Atlanta, GA, 31 July–3 August.
    1. Bellani M, Fornasari L, Chittaro L, et al. Virtual reality in autism: state of the art. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences. 2011;20(3):235–238. - PubMed
    1. Bird G, Leighton J, Press C, et al. Intact automatic imitation of human and robot actions in autism spectrum disorders. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences. 2007;274:3027–3031. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types