Page 143 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

126 Socially Intelligent Agents

The general goal is to create learning situations that stimulate children, get
them to socialize and integrate them in a group. People with autism are aware
that they have difficulties making sense of the outside world. To help them
move from predictable, solitary and repetitive situations where they feel safe
to socially interact with the world, the first objective of our robotic toys is to
build up their self-esteem by reinforcing what they do good. The idea is to ask
the child to do something, and to reward the child if the request is successfully
satisfied. To make this work, the activities and the rewards must be something
that interests the child, and one of the challenges is to get the attention of
the child and get them interested in interacting. Another advantage of robotic
toys is that they can have special devices that are particular interesting to these
children, trying to find incentives to make them open up to their surroundings.
Since each child is a distinct individual with preferences and capabilities, we
are not seeking to design one complete robotic toy that would work with all
autistic children. We want to observe the possible factors that might influence
the child’s interests in interacting with a robotic toy, like shape, colors, sounds,
music, voice, movements, dancing, trajectory, special devices, etc. To do so,
different mobile robots have been used in tests ranging from single sessions of
a couple of minutes to consecutive use over a five week period, with autistic
children or young adults of 7 to 20 years old. This way, our long term goal
is to design robotic toys that can take into account the interests, strengths and
weaknesses of each child, generate various levels of predictability, and create
a more tailored approach for personalized treatment.

2. Mobile Robotic Toys with Autistic Children
Two types of tests have been conducted with autistic children: short sessions
at the École du Touret, and using one robot over a five week period with groups
of children and young adults at the S.P.E.C. Tintamarre Summer camp.

2.1 Short Sessions

These sessions were held in two rooms: one regular classroom and a 20’x20’
room without tables and chairs. Children were allowed to interact freely with
the robots. At all time at least one educator was there to introduce the robot
to children, or to intervene in case of trouble. Even though these children
were not capable of fluent speech, some were able to understand the short