Abstract: There is an increasing need to introduce socially interactive robots as a means of assistance in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) treatment and rehabilitation, to improve the effectiveness of rehabilitation training and the diversification of treatment, and to alleviate the shortage of medical personnel in mainland China and other places in the world. In this preliminary clinical study, three different socially interactive robots with different appearances and functionalities were tested in therapy-like settings in four different rehabilitation facilities/institutions in Shenzhen, China. Seventy-four participants, including 52 children with ASD, whose processes of interacting with robots were recorded by three different cameras, all received a single-session three-robot intervention. Data were collected from not only the videos recorded, but also the questionnaires filled mostly by parents of the participants. Some insights from the preliminary results were obtained. These can contribute to the research on physical robot design and evaluations on robots in therapy-like settings. First, when doing physical robot design, some preferential focus should be on aspects of appearances and functionalities. Second, attention analysis using algorithms such as estimation of the directions of gaze and head posture of a child in the video clips can be adopted to quantitatively measure the prosocial behaviors and actions (e.g., attention shifting from one particular robot to other robots) of the children. Third, observing and calculating the frequency of the time children spend on exploring/playing with the robots in the video clips can be adopted to qualitatively analyze such behaviors and actions. Limitations of the present study are also presented.

儿童与机器人交互过程中的注意力转移：对孤独症谱系障碍儿童的初步临床研究

[1]Baltrušaitis T, Robinson P, Morency LP, 2016. OpenFace: an open source facial behavior analysis toolkit. Proc IEEE Winter Conf on Applications of Computer Vision, p.1-10.

[2]Begum M, Serna RW, Yanco HA, 2016. Are robots ready to deliver autism interventions? A comprehensive review. Int J Soc Rob, 8(2):157-181.

[3]Clabaugh C, Becerra D, Deng E, et al., 2018. Month-long, in-home case study of a socially assistive robot for children with autism spectrum disorder. Companion of the ACM/IEEE Int Conf on Human–Robot Interaction, p.87-88.

[4]Coeckelbergh M, Pop C, Simut R, et al., 2016. A survey of expectations about the role of robots in robot-assisted therapy for children with ASD: ethical acceptability, trust, sociability, appearance, and attachment. Sci Eng Ethics, 22(1):47-65.

[5]Costescu CA, Vanderborght B, David DO, 2014. The effects of robot-enhanced psychotherapy: a meta-analysis. Rev Gen Psychol, 18(2):127-136.

[6]Diehl JJ, Schmitt LM, Villano M, et al., 2012. The clinical use of robots for individuals with autism spectrum disorders: a critical review. Res Autism Spectr Disord, 6(1):249-262.

[7]English BA, Coates A, Howard A, 2017. Recognition of gestural behaviors expressed by humanoid robotic platforms for teaching affect recognition to children with autism—a healthy subjects pilot study. In: Kheddar A, Yoshida E, Ge SS, et al. (Eds.), Social Robotics. Springer, Cham.

[8]Esteban PG, Baxter P, Belpaeme T, et al., 2017. How to build a supervised autonomous system for robot-enhanced therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder. Paladyn J Behav Rob, 8(1):18-38.

[9]Greczek J, Matarić M, 2015. Encouraging user autonomy through robot-mediated intervention. Proc 10^th ACM/ IEEE Int Conf on Human–Robot Interaction Extended, p.189-190.

[10]Huijnen CAGJ, Lexis MAS, Jansens R, et al., 2016. Mapping robots to therapy and educational objectives for children with autism spectrum disorder. J Autism Dev Disord, 46(6):2100-2114.

[11]Huijnen CAGJ, Lexis MAS, Jansens R, et al., 2017. How to implement robots in interventions for children with autism? A co-creation study involving people with autism, parents and professionals. J Autism Dev Disord, 47(10): 3079-3096.

[12]Lee B, Xu J, Howard A, 2017. Does appearance matter? Validating engagement in therapy protocols with socially interactive humanoid robots. Proc IEEE Symp Series on Computational Intelligence, p.1-6.

[13]Matarić MJ, 2017. Socially assistive robotics: human augmentation versus automation. Sci Rob, 2(4), Article eaam5410.

[14]Munir KM, Lavelle TA, Helm DT, et al., 2016. Autism: a global framework for action. http://www.wish.org.qa/ summits/wish-2016/forum-reports/

[15]Pennisi P, Tonacci A, Tartarisco G, et al., 2016. Autism and social robotics: a systematic review. Autism Res, 9(2): 165-183.

[16]Robins B, Dautenhahn K, 2014. Tactile interactions with a humanoid robot: novel play scenario implementations with children with autism. Int J Soc Rob, 6(3):397-415.

[17]Scassellati B, Admoni H, Matarić M, 2012. Robots for use in autism research. Ann Rev Biom Eng, 14:275-294.

[18]Simut R, van de Perre G, Costescu C, et al., 2016. Probogotchi: a novel edutainment device as a bridge for interaction between a child with ASD and the typically developed sibling. J Evid Based Psychot, 16(1):91-112.

[19]Sun X, Allison C, Matthews FE, et al., 2013. Prevalence of autism in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Mol Autism, 4(1), Article 7.

[20]Wainer J, Dautenhahn K, Robins B, et al., 2014. A pilot study with a novel setup for collaborative play of the humanoid robot KASPAR with children with autism. Int J Soc Rob, 6(1):45-65.

[21]Wang S, Jiang M, Duchesne XM, et al., 2015. A typical visual saliency in autism spectrum disorder quantified through model-based eye tracking. Neuron, 88(3):604-616.

[22]WUCAILU ASD Research Institute, 2017. Report on the Industry Development of Autism Education and Rehabilitation in China (II). Huaxia Publishing House, Beijing, China (in Chinese).

[23]Zheng ZW, 2017. The Situation of the Life and the Learning of Two Million Autistic Children Became Severe. Modern Education News, Mar. 31, 2017 (in Chinese).