Robot as Emotion Communication Tool

Children with ASD identified robot emotions that matched situations

Under guidance of therapists from the Dow Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Center for Autism Rehabilitation & Training Sindh and assisted by two teams of 4 undergraduate students each, I explored the use of Robo-Chotu as an emotion-communication tool.

In a pilot, we put items such as a birthday hat or a band-aid on the robot. Programmed the robot to also show an appropriate expression on its face. Children with ASD then identified the emotion that matched the situation.

Left: Robo-Chotu turned off. This is the state the robot would be before the child entered the room. Right: Robo-Chotu turned on and happy.

Rebuilt Robo-Chotu (original) for this task. Added natural language processing and communication using Google Dialogflow. Wrote Android app for Wizard-of-Oz control.

We made the code public but the repositories are not maintained. Doxygen documentation is available for the first four repositories.

  1. Repo for the face Android app (initially exported from Unity)
  2. Repo for Unity code for face
  3. Repo for Android remote app for Wizard-of-Oz
  4. Repo for Arduino code
  5. Dialogflow template for chatbot