The AuRoRA Project studies if and how robots can become a "toy" that might serve an educational or therapeutic role for children with autism. Our main aim is to engage children with autism in coordinated and synchronized interactions with the environment thus helping them to develop and increase their communication and social interaction skills. Important social skills that we aim to facilitate are turn-taking and imitation, in addition to general communication and interaction skills that are required in human-human contact. Humans are the best models for human social behaviour, but their social behaviour is very subtle, elaborate, and widely unpredictable. Many children with autism are however interested to play with mechanical toys or computers... [more]
Run by:
Adaptive Systems Research Group
University of Hertfordshire