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Towards adaptive autonomous robots in autism therapy: varieties of interactions

This paper reports results deriving from the Aurora project (www.aurora-project.com) where we have pioneered research into the possible use of robots in autism therapy. Autistic children have difficulties in social interaction, communication and fantasy and imagination. As part of the project we run trials where autistic children are playing with a small, non-humanoid mobile robot that can engage children in simple interaction games. In our project we focus on the behavioural, rather than the affective level of robots used in therapy. In this paper we first discuss in more detail varieties of interactions where one child, or two children simultaneously, play with a robot. We then outline a new research direction in the project which studies how a mobile robot can adapt to individual children. Quantitative examples of activity levels in child-robot interactions are included. The paper concludes by outlining future research directions for adaptive robots in autism therapy.