Now it's going to school, to help children with autism and special needs.Įarlier this week Aldebaran Robotics announced the launch of ASK Nao (Autism Solution for Kids), a program that will pair its little humanoid robot Nao with children with autism. The company hopes to build on the success of previous studies, which showed that some children with autism achieved a 30 percent increase in social interactions and better verbal communication when a robot is in the same room. The studies also showed that these improvements can extend to interactions with parents and therapists. "After a year of testing, gaining the positive feedback from our beta testing schools in Britain and the United States, and the encouragement of the autism community, we have been driven to launch this initiative to help children with autism throughout the world realize their full potential." "We have developed educational games that allow children to work on verbal and non-verbal communication, emotional intelligence, mimicking, and even basic academic skills," explains Olivier Joubert, autism business unit manager at Aldebaran. Several friendly robots, including Keepon, Hanson Robokind, Bandit, and Kaspar, among others, have already demonstrated some degree of success as aids in autism evaluation and therapy. But Aldebaran wants to have an even bigger impact by fostering a community of developers, therapists, researchers, teachers, and parents to work together. Aldebaran says it has developed a user-friendly interface for teachers to help them plan, monitor, and analyze Nao interactions with children to determine their impact on learning. The company has also built a variety of apps for use in the classroom, to help kids learn about emotions and body language and let them practice imitation, turn taking, and other social skills. And teachers and developers can create their own apps and share them with the community. "Nao has the potential to be an outstanding teaching resource," says Ben Waterworth, a teacher at Topcliffe School, in the U.K.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |