A Close Look at the Imitation Performance of Children with Autism and Typically Developing Children Using a Robotic Syst
- PDF / 4,136,654 Bytes
- 23 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 38 Downloads / 177 Views
A Close Look at the Imitation Performance of Children with Autism and Typically Developing Children Using a Robotic System Alireza Taheri1 · Ali Meghdari1 · Mohammad H. Mahoor2 Accepted: 21 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Deficit in imitation skills is one of the core symptoms of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this study, we have tried to look closer at the body gesture imitation performance of 20 participants with autism, i.e. ASD group, and 20 typically developing subjects, i.e. TD group, in a set of robot-child and human-child gross imitation tasks. The results of manual scoring by two specialists indicated that while the TD group showed a significantly better imitation performance than the ASD group during the tasks, both ASD and TD groups performed better in the human-child mode than the robot-child mode in our experimental setup. Next, to introduce an automated imitation assessment system, we present different mathematical models of the children’s imitation performance using some State-Image based algorithms including Acceptable Bound, Mahalanobis Distance, and Signals’ Cross-Correlations as well as Hidden Markov Models based on the time-dependent kinematics data of the participants’ joints. Among the different studied models, we observed that the “State-Image Acceptable Bound method with position, velocity, and acceleration features” is the best one. This method has a mean Pearson correlation of ~ 45%, which is fairly comparable to the related works (out of autism field) in assessing the quality of dynamic actions. Finally, for a treatment application of using artificial intelligence algorithms in automated evaluation of children’s behaviors as an unbiased and quantifiable measurement in HRI, we propose a reciprocal gross imitation human–robot interaction platform with the potential to aid in the cognitive rehabilitation of children with autism. Keywords Imitation · Social robots · Autism Spectrum Disorder · Hidden Markov model · Automated assessment · Human–robot-interaction
1 Introduction Impaired imitation and motor skills are among the skills that are considered as core symptoms in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) [1, 2]. These impairments have been studied comprehensively by researchers in the autism area [1–5]. As mentioned in the literature, the comprehen-
B
Alireza Taheri [email protected] Ali Meghdari [email protected] Mohammad H. Mahoor [email protected]
1
Social and Cognitive Robotics Laboratory, Center of Excellence in Design, Robotics and Automation (CEDRA), Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
2
Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Vision and Social Robotics Lab, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA
sive Reciprocal Imitation Training (RIT) programs and its principles and basic factors, such as being face-to-face with patients, imitating movements of the body, sounds, and postures, how to work with dolls and toys, and imagination and pretended play and symbolic games, affect not only on the imit
Data Loading...
