Usability of a robot's realistic facial expressions and peripherals in autistic children's therapy

Li, Jamy; Davison, Daniel; Schadenberg, Bob; Chevalier, Pauline; Alcorn, Alyssa; Williams, Alria; Petrovic, Suncica; Dimitrijevic, Snezana Babovic; Shen, Jie; Pellicano, Liz; others

Abstract

Robot-assisted therapy is an emerging form of therapy for autistic children, although designing effective robot behaviors is a challenge for effective implementation of such therapy. A series of usability tests assessed trends in the effectiveness of modelling a robot's facial expressions on realistic facial expressions and of adding peripherals enabling child-led control of emotion learning activities with autistic children. Nineteen autistic children interacted with a small humanoid robot and an adult therapist in several emotion-learning activities that featured realistic facial expressions modelled on either a pre-existing database or live facial mirroring, and that used peripherals (tablets or tangible 'squishies') to enable child-led activities. Both types of realistic facial expressions by the robot were less effective than exaggerated expressions, with the mirroring being unintuitive for children. The tablet was usable but required more feedback and lower latency, while the tactile tangibles were engaging aids.

Citation

Li, J., Davison, D., Schadenberg, B., Chevalier, P., Alcorn, A., Williams, A., Petrovic, S., Dimitrijevic, S. B., Shen, J., Pellicano, L., & others. (2019, March). Usability of a robot's realistic facial expressions and peripherals in autistic children's therapy. Paper presented at 2nd Workshop on Social Robots in Therapy and Care. 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2019), Daegu, Korea

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 2nd Workshop on Social Robots in Therapy and Care. 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2019)
• Start Date: Mar 11, 2019
• End Date: Mar 14, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Mar 20, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Article Number: 12236
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2007.12236
• Keywords: human-robot interaction; autism spectrum disorders; early childhood development; behavior design; tablets; tangible user interfaces; facial expressions
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/4181181