Development of a wizard-of-Oz based framework for QTRobot to facilitate the learning of handwriting in children with dysgraphia

This article presents a framework for a companion robot aimed at facilitating the learning of handwriting in children with dysgraphia. The framework is composed by a Wizard of Oz (WOZ) interface, a library of social behaviors and a perception system. The WOZ interface has been realized as a web service via Flask for cross-platform use, controlling the robot through ROS. A robot behaviors library has been designed by integrating robot gestures, facial expressions, and speech. The visual perception of the robot exploited a RGB-Depth camera to recognize humans in terms of their skeleton. The presented framework is a prototype that will be evaluated in the field during long-term child robot interactions. This framework is represents a basic building block in the development of a semi-autonomous system for the training of handwriting and fine motor skills.