Robots and autism disorder: promoting the competence generalization

One nuclear behavior modification in people with autism is a qualitative change in social interactions, resulting in the pursuit of social isolation, instrumental relationships, absence of an awareness of emotions and feelings, and difficulty in imitating actions or situations with a more representative content. Up to the moment, the work developed by this team aimed to investigate how robots can contribute to encourage active participation of the autistic children and to promote the social interaction between the child and the others, exploring the concept of generalization of acquired skills. However, very low-level robotic platforms, such as Lego MindStorm were applied. In future work, a humanoid robot with more abilities, including a wider range of sensors and with the possibility of using facial expressions and basic communication, is intended to be used.The authors are grateful to teachers, therapists, students of the primary school EB1/JI of Gualtar, Braga and their parents for their participation in the project. The authors are also grateful to the Portuguese Foundation (FCT) for funding through the R&D project RIPD/ADA/109407/2009 and SFRH/BD/71600/2010