It is known that children with autism can benefit from interacting with robotic devices. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA identifies around 1 in 68 American children as being on the autism spectrum. Other countries also have similar prevalence rates. Therefore, providing therapeutic devices is becoming of increasing importance. Here we address the problem of effectively designing and building a robotic device fit for this purpose. The robot we have designed uses a simple spherical morphology together with a collection of autonomous behaviors and controllable modalities. The platform, is robust, simple, safe, and provides a wide range of movement, visual, sound and touch interaction capabilities to encourage the child to learn and play.

This video shows a light hearted view of a rolling autonomous robot named Roball. Roball is shown interacting with various children who age from 10 months old to teenagers at a high school. The clips show the different ways children interact with Roball and also the different types of reactions the children can have to Roball. Each clip was taken from a trial that was conducted to investigate Child-Robot Interaction (CRI).

There is great potential for robotic devices when being applied with children. They can be used from play to assistive applications. We develop robotic devices for a diverse range of children that differ in age, gender and ability, which includes children that are diagnosed with cognitive difficulties such as autism. Every child is an individual and they vary in their personalities and styles of interaction. Therefore, being able to adjust the robot's behaviour to the type of interaction it is receiving was believed to be essential. In this abstract we examine a series of trials which investigated how adaptation (through changes in motion and sound) on a fully autonomous rolling robot could help gain and sustain the interest of five different children. We discovered surprising benefits to having adaptation on-board Roball.

Increasingly researchers are looking outside of normal communication channels (such as video and audio) to provide additional forms of communication or interaction between a human and a robot, or a robot and its environment. Amongst the new channels being investigated is the detection of touch using infrared, proprioceptive and temperature sensors. Our work aims at developing a system that can detect natural touch or interaction coming from children playing with a robot, and adapt to this interaction. This paper reports trials carried out using Roball, a spherical mobile robot, demonstrating how sensory data patterns can be identified in human-robot interaction, and exploited for achieving behavioral adaptation. The experimental methodology used for these trials is reported, which validated the hypothesis that human interaction can not only be perceived from proprioceptive sensors on-board a robotic platform, but that this perception has the ability to lead to adaptation.