Robot helps kids with Autism

Check this little guy out.  His name is Kaspar. 

Those of us from Generation X might immediately think of a friendly ghost, but in fact Kaspar is a playful child size humanoid robot with a face inspired by comics and Japanese Noh theatre, no less.

But more importantly, he is being used to help teach social skills to children on the autistic spectrum.  Nice!

Kaspar stands for “Kinesics and Synchronisation in Personal Assistant Robots” – and he has been developed by the United Kingdom’s University of Hertfordshire.  The Hertfordshire team have been busy developing Kaspar for a number of years, and he was demonstrated to the public yesterday >>> at the London Science Museum.

Kaspar has been designed with a minimally expressive face so he doesn’t overwhelm his playmates with complex social cues.  The idea is that children on the autistic spectrum will feel comfortable looking him in the eye and interacting with him.  Kaspar is designed to teach children skills like turn-taking, imitation and the general communication and interaction skills that are required in human contact.

Whilst humans may be the best models for the complex and unpredictable social behaviour, many children on the autistic spectrum shy away from the seemingly inexplicable behaviour of humans – and prefer to play with mechanical toys or computers.  Enter Kaspar.

The development team took a low cost approach to Kaspar with only enough robotics and motors to achieve what he needs to be able to do.  However he is sophisticated enough to include embedded tactile sensors that detect different kinds of touch, video cameras in each eye and a mouth that can open and smile in varying degrees.

The prototype was built for $2,500 – so presumably future production models will be able to be built much more cheaply.  It’s exciting to see such innovative approaches to teaching social skills to children on the autistic spectrum!

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