Project name: Autism Diagnostic Observation with Robot Evaluator
Project acronym: ADORE
Dates: 01.09.2014 - 31.08.2018
Total budget: 1,000,000.00 HRK
Funding: Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ)
Project Number: 93743-2014
ADORE
The main goal of the ADORE project is the development of a robot-based diagnostic protocol and validation of a robotic diagnostic assistant in clinical settings. The robots are used as ASD co-evaluators to help a human evaluator to assess a child's behavior objectively. To the best of our knowledge, such a robot-based ASD diagnostics system is the first of its kind.
The robot-assisted ASD diagnostic protocol consists of four tasks and is based on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) which is considered to be the “golden standard” of ASD diagnostics. Within the tasks, the robot observes social cues such as eye contact, verbal activity and ability to imitate. Since our goal was to make the robot as autonomous as possible, we modelled the tasks using the Mixed Observability Markov Decision Processes (MOMDPs), which enables the robot to infer the information about the child and control task execution autonomously. On the protocol level, we use the standard Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) model which enables the robot to choose tasks of the protocol autonomously and combine observations from tasks into a final assessment of a child’s behavior.
NAO robot demonstrates frog jumping gestures to the child
Preparing the robots for a session at the Child Communication Research Laboratory
Clinical trials are performed at the Child Communication Research Laboratory, which is located at the Croatian Institute for Brain Research. During various development stages, more than 50 children have been introduced to the robot. Fifteen of them (7 developing typically, 8 with ASD) were a part of the latest study which showed that, given perfect observations of social cues, our robots are capable of identifying the behavior of the child.
Project partners:
- University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (HR)
- University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences (HR)
On 22 June 2019, Frano Petric presented our experiences with the ADORE project at the first Assistive technologies and communication conference (ASTEK) in Belgrade, Serbia.
Following our collaboration with Alfanum and professor Delic from the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, we were invited to present our experience of using humanoid robots with children with autism. Through the talk "Diagnosing ASD with a robot evaluator - experiences from the ADORE project" Frano talked about the technology behind the robot-assisted ASD diagnostics, challenges we faced but also about mixed reactions of the children to the robot and overwhelmingly positive reactions from the parents and caregivers.
We would like to thank ASTEK organizers and especially professor Delic for the invitation and are hoping we will be able to take part in future ASTEK events.