Text: Michaela Nesvarova Photo: Jamy Li
DE-ENIGMA PROJECT HOPES TO REVOLUTIONIZE AUTISM THERAPY
Robots for autistic children Can interaction with robots help autistic children improve their interaction with humans? Quite possibly. Together with European partners, UT researchers from the HMI group are developing a robot for autistic children, a robot that could help these children improve their interpersonal communication.
T
here are over five million people with
child – and is meant for young children. ‘Other
autism in Europe. As is characteristic for
therapies are more test oriented. They include
this neurodevelopmental condition, chil-
tasks with correct answers. Our approach aims
dren (and adults) on the autism spectrum expe-
to use the robot as a playmate rather than a
rience difficulties with social communication and
teacher of the child,’ says Jamy Li. Li is a
interaction, which influences not only their lives
researcher from the UT’s HMI (Human Media
but also lives of people around them. So wouldn’t
Interaction) group who is working on the
it be great if they could ‘train’ their social skills on
DE-ENIGMA project and whose own work
a robot, and not even know they are doing it?
focuses on human-robot interaction.
The DE-ENIGMA project is a Horizon2020 project coordinated by the University of Twente. It hopes
Make a face
to revolutionize autism therapy by using a robot
How would it work? The children would simply
called Robokind’s Zeno, which resembles a young
play with Zeno. ‘The robot first mirrors face movements of the child, so the child becomes interested in different parts of the robot’s face,’
‘The robot first mirrors face movements of the child’
explains Li. ‘As the next steps, the robot indicates which part of the face to move or asks the child to identify the right part of the face.’ Why the focus on face? ‘Faces are really important in order to see how people feel and react to your actions. However, autistic children don’t process facial expressions the same as typically developing children.’ The robot could therefore help the
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