Robot-Assisted Socio-Emotional Intervention Framework for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This paper presents a novel robot-assisted intervention framework designed to target sensory processing and emotion regulation difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder. Three types of systems are utilized to provide scalable robotic interactions with gesture-based and character-based socio-emotional expressions. The intervention framework includes (1) an emotional interaction and regulation game in mobile computing settings, (2) interactive robotic sessions with socio-emotional scenarios, and (3) gesture identification games to measure emotion processing and verbal skills in socio-emotional settings. This paper also presents preliminary results obtained from a pilot study conducted to evaluate the three interventions.