Modeling interpersonal perception in dyadic interactions: towards robot-assisted social mediation in the real world.

Social mediator robots have shown potential in facilitating human interactions by improving communication, fostering relationships, providing support, and promoting inclusivity. However, for these robots to effectively shape human interactions, they must understand the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics. This necessitates models of human understanding that capture interpersonal states and the relational affect arising from interactions.

Promoting Social Engagement With a Multi-Role Dancing Robot for In-Home Autism Care.

This work describes the design of real-time dance-based interaction with a humanoid robot, where the robot seeks to promote physical activity in children by taking on multiple roles as a dance partner. It acts as a leader by initiating dances but can also act as a follower by mimicking a child's dance movements. Dances in the leader role are produced by a sequence-to-sequence (S2S) Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network trained on children's music videos taken from YouTube.

Corrigendum: Toward an Automated Measure of Social Engagement for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder-A Personalized Computational Modeling Approach.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2020.

Toward an Automated Measure of Social Engagement for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder-A Personalized Computational Modeling Approach.

Social engagement is a key indicator of an individual's socio-emotional and cognitive states. For a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this serves as an important factor in assessing the quality of the interactions and interventions. So far, qualitative measures of social engagement have been used extensively in research and in practice, but a reliable, objective, and quantitative measure is yet to be widely accepted and utilized.

A Robotic Framework to Facilitate Sensory Experiences for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Preliminary Study.

The diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children is commonly accompanied by a diagnosis of sensory processing disorders. Abnormalities are usually reported in multiple sensory processing domains, showing a higher prevalence of unusual responses, particularly to tactile, auditory and visual stimuli. This paper discusses a novel robot-based framework designed to target sensory difficulties faced by children with ASD in a controlled setting.

Interactions With an Empathetic Agent: Regulating Emotions and Improving Engagement in Autism.

Based on years of research establishing the utility of socially assistive robots (SARs) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) intervention, such robots have now become popular tools, widely used in special education schools, autism care centers, and clinical settings. Most previous studies have explored the roles of SARs as instructors, learning aides, and social-skills trainers, focusing on the learning, language, and social impairments associated with ASD. This article addresses aspects of empathy and emotion regulation (ER) impairments, which are important underlying factors for many atypicalities manifested in ASD.

Sensing Technologies for Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening and Intervention.

This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in sensing technologies that are relevant for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) screening and therapy. This disorder is characterized by difficulties in social communication, social interactions, and repetitive behaviors. It is diagnosed during the first three years of life.