Robot-Enhanced Therapy: Development and Validation of Supervised Autonomous Robotic System for Autism Spectrum Disorders Therapy

Hoang Long Cao, Pablo G. Esteban, Madeleine Bartlett, Paul Baxter, Tony Belpaeme, Erik Billing, Haibin Cai, Mark Coeckelbergh, Cristina Costescu, Daniel David, Albert De Beir, Daniel Hernandez, James Kennedy, Honghai Liu, Silviu Matu, Alexandre Mazel, Amit Pandey, Kathleen Richardson, Emmanuel Senft, Serge ThillGreet Van De Perre, Bram Vanderborght, David Vernon, Kutoma Wakanuma, Hui Yu, Xiaolong Zhou, Tom Ziemke

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

66 Scopus citations

Abstract

Robot-assisted therapy (RAT) offers potential advantages for improving the social skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This article provides an overview of the developed technology and clinical results of the EC-FP7-funded Development of Robot-Enhanced therapy for children with AutisM spectrum disorders (DREAM) project, which aims to develop the next level of RAT in both clinical and technological perspectives, commonly referred to as robot-enhanced therapy (RET). Within this project, a supervised autonomous robotic system is collaboratively developed by an interdisciplinary consortium including psychotherapists, cognitive scientists, roboticists, computer scientists, and ethicists, which allows robot control to exceed classical remote control methods, e.g., Wizard of Oz (WoZ), while ensuring safe and ethical robot behavior. Rigorous clinical studies are conducted to validate the efficacy of RET. Current results indicate that RET can obtain an equivalent performance compared to that of human standard therapy for children with ASDs. We also discuss the next steps of developing RET robotic systems.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8683968
Pages (from-to)49-58
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine
Volume26
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2019
Externally publishedYes

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