Luke Had C-3PO and R2-D2……
When Charlie was starting to randomly imitate sounds on his own, the soundtrack of our lives started to get taken over by assorted rhythmic patterns of grinding grunts, beeps, and hums of all sorts and tones. After some careful listening to everything in the house, we realized that the sources for two of his main sound-verbalizations were the garage door (with the automatic opener) of his grandparents’ house, and the microwave oven.
Because of course—-unlike Jim and me rambling on about whatever and in whatever tone of voice and with whatever choice of words we pleased, mechanical devices always sound the same. (And you know what that means if they don’t—repair time.) It makes quite a lot of sense that autistic children would respond well to robots specially created to “interact” with them. Science Daily reports about a preliminary study about Socially Assisted Robotics (SAR) and autistic children:
The initial study, reported in the June Conference on Interaction Design for Children with Special Needs in Chicago, tested whether interaction as opposed to simple passive observation was going on between ASD children and a colorful bubble-blowing wheeled robot.
The robot had two settings. In one, it carried on its rolling and bubble blowing on its own internal schedule, regardless of the behavior of the child. In the other, “when the child pushes a button, then the bubbles blow,” in the words of the Chicago presentation.
The study watched the children and observed differences. “We found that the behavior of the robot affects the social behavior of a child (both human-human interaction and human-robot interaction): social behavior with a contingent robot was greater than with a random robot.
Charlie would, I have to say, be more likely to pay little attention to a bubble-blowing being, but if he had to do something—”interact”—-I would think he’d be more interested.
The “Behavior-Based Behavior Intervention Architecture” (B3IA) of the robots is based on DIR/Floortime therapy. Guess that means they’re not only playmates, but potential therapists.
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POSTED IN: Education, Language, Technology
2 opinions for Luke Had C-3PO and R2-D2……
Melody
Jul 22, 2008 at 8:58 pm
R2D2 was my favorite. I would talk at the screen to him in R2D2 language.
Regan
Jul 22, 2008 at 11:46 pm
The original interactive robot
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