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A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication skills including motor control, turn-taking, and emotion recognition. Innovative technology, such as socially assistive robots, has shown to be a viable method for Autism therapy. This paper presen...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Feng, Huanghao, Mahoor, Mohammad H., Dino, Francesca
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9169087/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35677082
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.855819
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author Feng, Huanghao
Mahoor, Mohammad H.
Dino, Francesca
author_facet Feng, Huanghao
Mahoor, Mohammad H.
Dino, Francesca
author_sort Feng, Huanghao
collection PubMed
description Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication skills including motor control, turn-taking, and emotion recognition. Innovative technology, such as socially assistive robots, has shown to be a viable method for Autism therapy. This paper presents a novel robot-based music-therapy platform for modeling and improving the social responses and behaviors of children with ASD. Our autonomous social interactive system consists of three modules. Module one provides an autonomous initiative positioning system for the robot, NAO, to properly localize and play the instrument (Xylophone) using the robot’s arms. Module two allows NAO to play customized songs composed by individuals. Module three provides a real-life music therapy experience to the users. We adopted Short-time Fourier Transform and Levenshtein distance to fulfill the design requirements: 1) “music detection” and 2) “smart scoring and feedback”, which allows NAO to understand music and provide additional practice and oral feedback to the users as applicable. We designed and implemented six Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) sessions including four intervention sessions. Nine children with ASD and seven Typically Developing participated in a total of fifty HRI experimental sessions. Using our platform, we collected and analyzed data on social behavioral changes and emotion recognition using Electrodermal Activity (EDA) signals. The results of our experiments demonstrate most of the participants were able to complete motor control tasks with 70% accuracy. Six out of the nine ASD participants showed stable turn-taking behavior when playing music. The results of automated emotion classification using Support Vector Machines illustrates that emotional arousal in the ASD group can be detected and well recognized via EDA bio-signals. In summary, the results of our data analyses, including emotion classification using EDA signals, indicate that the proposed robot-music based therapy platform is an attractive and promising assistive tool to facilitate the improvement of fine motor control and turn-taking skills in children with ASD.
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spelling pubmed-91690872022-06-07 A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study Feng, Huanghao Mahoor, Mohammad H. Dino, Francesca Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication skills including motor control, turn-taking, and emotion recognition. Innovative technology, such as socially assistive robots, has shown to be a viable method for Autism therapy. This paper presents a novel robot-based music-therapy platform for modeling and improving the social responses and behaviors of children with ASD. Our autonomous social interactive system consists of three modules. Module one provides an autonomous initiative positioning system for the robot, NAO, to properly localize and play the instrument (Xylophone) using the robot’s arms. Module two allows NAO to play customized songs composed by individuals. Module three provides a real-life music therapy experience to the users. We adopted Short-time Fourier Transform and Levenshtein distance to fulfill the design requirements: 1) “music detection” and 2) “smart scoring and feedback”, which allows NAO to understand music and provide additional practice and oral feedback to the users as applicable. We designed and implemented six Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) sessions including four intervention sessions. Nine children with ASD and seven Typically Developing participated in a total of fifty HRI experimental sessions. Using our platform, we collected and analyzed data on social behavioral changes and emotion recognition using Electrodermal Activity (EDA) signals. The results of our experiments demonstrate most of the participants were able to complete motor control tasks with 70% accuracy. Six out of the nine ASD participants showed stable turn-taking behavior when playing music. The results of automated emotion classification using Support Vector Machines illustrates that emotional arousal in the ASD group can be detected and well recognized via EDA bio-signals. In summary, the results of our data analyses, including emotion classification using EDA signals, indicate that the proposed robot-music based therapy platform is an attractive and promising assistive tool to facilitate the improvement of fine motor control and turn-taking skills in children with ASD. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9169087/ /pubmed/35677082 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.855819 Text en Copyright © 2022 Feng, Mahoor and Dino. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Feng, Huanghao
Mahoor, Mohammad H.
Dino, Francesca
A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study
title A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study
title_full A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study
title_fullStr A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study
title_full_unstemmed A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study
title_short A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children With Autism: A Pilot Study
title_sort music-therapy robotic platform for children with autism: a pilot study
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9169087/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35677082
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.855819
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