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Overview
Special education requires focused attention and a more personalized curriculum
for each student. Classes qualifying for federal aid under the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) require parents, teachers, physicians, and
others to develop an Individualized Education Protocol (IEP) for each student
that the special education teachers will follow when interacting with students.
For students with autism, the IEP's will, without fail, emphasize one-on-one contact between teachers and students. Even though the teacher to student ratio is higher in special education classrooms, there is still a need for more one-on-one interaction. To that end, it is possible that robots could be used in the classroom to increase the time students get one-on-one working on their IEP content.
The aim of research is to explore the nature of robotics serving children with autism in education and improving educational as well as socialization outcomes.
Key Issues
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How is HRI in education different/better than HCI?
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What is the nature of embodiment and how does that change the role of a robot?
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What would this do differently than a pedagogical agent?
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What effects should we study when examining the nature of robotics in autism?
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What are the ethical concerns while working with children with autism in the classroom?
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How should robot tutoring for students with autism differ from tutoring mainstream students?
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What interaction modalities are best for working with students with autism?
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How can a lesson plan be most effectively adapted to multiple modalities?
Approach
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Our lab's approach to assistive human-robot interaction (AHRI) is
to employ a non-contact approach called Socially Assistive Robotics
(SAR). SAR is based on using robots as a means of monitoring,
encouraging, and motivating users in a one-on-one individualized
interaction that involves no physical contact (with the exception of
using a touch screen or buttons on the robot).
In the context of SAR, we are performing experiments with user
populations that address the above-listed key issues in a
hypothesis-testing approach. The experiments involve one-on-one
interaction between the student and robot, where data are collected
through a collection of means, including questionnaires, video, user's
physical and physiologic responses, etc.
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Publications
David J. Feil-Seifer and Maja J. Mataric´. "
A Multi-Modal Approach to Selective Interaction in Assistive Domains".
In IEEE Proceedings of the International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (
RO-MAN), pages
416-421,
Nashville, TN,
Aug 2005.(
.pdf)
David J. Feil-Seifer and Maja J. Mataric´. "
Defining Socially Assistive Robotics".
Poster paper in International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, pages
465-468,
Chicago, Il,
Jun 2005.(
.pdf)
