Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) have demonstrated success in the delivery of interventions to individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). To date, these robot-mediated interventions have primarily been designed and implemented by robotics researchers. It remains unclear whether therapists could independently utilize robots to deliver therapies in clinical settings. In this paper, we conducted a study to investigate whether therapists could design and implement robot-mediated interventions for children with ASD. Furthermore, we compared therapists’ performance, efficiency, and perceptions towards using a Virtual Reality (VR) and kinesthetic-based interface for delivering robot-mediated interventions. Overall, our results demonstrated therapists could independently design and implement interventions with a SAR. They were faster at designing a new intervention using VR than a kinesthetic interface. Therapists also had similar performance to delivering inperson interventions when utilizing VR to deliver interventions with the robot. Therapists reported moderate workload using the VR interface and perceived VR to be usable.

Socially assistive robots (SARs) are currently being developed to assist in the delivery of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapies to individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although SARs have demonstrated positive outcomes, minimal research has focused on investigating needs of the therapists that deliver treatments. Therapist perspectives are important as they will likely be the primary end-users of SARs. In this study, we investigated the perceptions and design requirements of ABA therapists towards SARs and the interfaces used to operate them. Therapists were interviewed after they independently designed, developed, and implemented their own robot-mediated interventions. Overall, therapists’ general perceptions towards integrating a SAR within their existing workflow was positive and they expected that children would benefit from ABA therapies delivered by a SAR. The therapists also provided insights on design requirements for utilizing SARs and their interfaces as well as potential clinical and future use cases for this technology.