An Interactive Robotic Framework to Facilitate Sensory Experiences for Children with ASD

Abstract: The diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children is commonly accompanied by a diagnosis of sensory processing disorders as well. Abnormalities are usually reported in multiple sensory processing domains, showing a higher prevalence of unusual responses, particularly to tactile, auditory and visual stimuli. This paper discusses a novel robot-based framework designed to target sensory difficulties faced by children with ASD in a controlled setting. The setup consists of a number of sensory stations, together with robotic agents that navigate the stations and interact with the stimuli as they are presented. These stimuli are designed to resemble real world scenarios that form a common part of one's everyday experiences. Given the strong interest of children with ASD in technology in general and robots in particular, we attempt to utilize our robotic platform to demonstrate socially acceptable responses to the stimuli in an interactive, pedagogical setting that encourages the child's social, motor and vocal skills, while providing a diverse sensory experience. A user study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed framework, with a total of 18 participants (5 with ASD and 13 typically developing) between the ages of 4 and 12 years. We describe our methods of data collection, coding of video data and the analysis of the results obtained from the study. We also discuss the limitations of the current work and detail our plans for the future work to improve the validity of the obtained results.