D’URSO Raphaël

These : Interactive Technologies for Children with autism spectrum disorder

Recently, there have been considerable advances in the research on innovative information communication technology for the education of people with autism. There have been a variety of recent applications in autism, which include the use of interactive environments implemented in computers, virtual environments, avatars, serious games, robots etc. Despite exciting preliminary results, their use remains limited. Many of the existing technologies have limited capabilities and performance in actual interactive conditions. Clinically, most technologies have not been validated beyond proof-of-concept studies. Robotics systems, developed as interactive devices for children with autism, have been used to assess the child’s response to robot behaviors; to elicit behaviors that are promoted in the child; to model, teach and practice a skill; and to provide feedback on performance in specific environments (e.g., therapeutic sessions). In our previous studies, the robot was used as a tool in clinical investigations to better understand the interaction with different populations (adults, TD child and child with ASD). The results shown the impact of the participants on robot learning during an imitation game. In this project, we ask the question of what is the impact of interactive games on the learning progress of children with ASD and robots? This project has two objectives: use a robot to motivate the child to learn a task and propose an artificial modeling of the early stages of child’s development.