Kaspar, the social robot and ways it may help children with autism - An overview

KASPAR is a child-sized, socially-interactive humanoid robot developed by the Adaptive Systems Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire (U.K.) as an educational and/or therapeutic tool to facilitate and help develop communication and social interaction skills in children with autism. Kaspar has been designed to help teachers and parents support the children in many ways. It has been used in case-study evaluation with about 170 children (long-term studies where each child interact with the robot over several weeks or months) both in schools and in families' homes. The paper presents ways in which the robot can engage autistic children in simple interactive activities and how the robot assumes the role of social mediator - encouraging children with autism to interact with other people (children and adults). Results of case study examples show how the robot may help to break the isolation, encourage the use of language, mediate child-child or child-adult interaction, help children with autism manage collaborative play, compliment the work in the classroom, provide the opportunity for basic embodied and cognitive learning, resulting in the emerging awareness of cause and effect.