‘ Deep learning’ robots to help autistic children

◗ Armed with personalised ‘ deep learning’, the child- friendly robot NAO can smoothly estimate the engagement and interest of each autistic child

New York, June 29: MIT scientists have developed a new type of “deep learning” network that can aid robots gauge the quality of their interactions with children having autism spectrum conditions by using data unique to each child.

Autism spectrum disorder is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives and socialises with others, causing problems in social interaction and communication. The term “spectrum” in autism spectrum disorder refers to the wide range of symptoms and severity.

Armed with personalised “deep learning”, the child- friendly robot NAO can smoothly estimate the engagement and interest of each autistic child, using data unique to that particular individual, based on a study performed on 35 autistic children.

The new development can make their lives easier.

“The long- term goal is not to create robots that will replace human therapists, but to augment them with key information that the therapists can use to personalise the therapy content and also make more engaging and naturalistic interactions between the robots and children with autism,” said Oggi Rudovic, the first author of the study.

The robot’s perception of the children’s responses agreed with assessments by human experts, with a correlation of 60 per cent, according to the scientists.

“The challenge of creating machine learning and AI ( artificial intelligence) that works in autism is particularly vexing, because the usual AI methods require a lot of data that are similar for each category that is learned. In autism where heterogeneity reigns, the normal AI approaches fail,” said Rosalind Picard, coauthor of the study.

The robot- assisted therapy involves a human therapist showing flash- cards of different faces expressing different emotions, like happiness, sadness, fear and a programmed robot or NAO, which shows the same emotions to the child.

The therapist observes how the child engages with the robot and gets feedback on how the lesson is to be taken further. NAO is a two feet tall robot resembling an armoured superhero or a droid, which conveys different emotions by changing its eye colour, limb- motion and the tone of its voice.