社交机器人在孤独症谱系障碍儿童中的应用

Social interaction impairment is one of the core symptoms of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) which requires early intervention for successful social skills. The conventional approaches of psychological rehabilitation have many limitations such as time consuming, high cost, and shortage of professional rehabilitation therapists. With the development of artificial intelligence, social robots with their unique strengths are widely used in improving social interactions of children with ASD. This paper discusses the potential of social robots in the treatment of autism spectrum disorder and the current applications of social robots for the therapeutic treatment of joint attention, self-initiations, motor imitation, and other social function in ASD patients. It also analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of social robots during the intervention in terms of experimental environments and methods among other factors. It is proposed that future research can be conducted to develop new social scenarios based on the characteristics of human-robot interaction; combine multimodality and brain science and technology to reveal the psychological process of human-robot interaction; construct closed-loop systems for social robots by leveraging the advancing artificial intelligence technology.