Robot-enhanced therapy: development and validation of supervised autonomous robotic system for autism spectrum disorders therapy

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.R obot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has shown po- tential advantages to improve social skills for children with Autism Spectrum Disor- ders (ASD). This paper overviews the technology development and clinical results of the EC-FP7 funded DREAM project that aims to develop the next level of RAT in both clinical and technologi- cal perspectives – which we term Robot-Enhanced Therapy (RET). Within the project, a supervised autonomous robotic system is collaboratively de- veloped by an interdisciplinary consortium, includ- ing psychotherapists, cognitive scientists, roboti- cists, computer scientists and ethicists, allowing the robot control to go beyond the classical remote control methods (Wizard of Oz – WoZ) while ensur- ing safe and ethical robot behavior. Rigorous clin- ical studies are conducted to validate the efficacy of RET. Current results indicate that RET can ob- tain equivalent performance compared to human standard therapy for children with ASD. We also discuss the next steps of developing RET robotic systems