As recently reported, it has been discovered that children with autism respond remarkably well to robots, while they may struggle with human interaction. In addition to the potentially confusing or frightening input from a human (words, facial expression, body language, inflection), a human therapist may also get frustrated at having to repeat something over and over. Not so with a robot, who can repeat something an infinite number of times, in the same way, without ever getting frustrated.
About one out of every 68 kids born in the United States has some form of autism. Researchers and doctors are eagerly looking to robots as a powerful new tool for helping kids on the autism spectrum.
“Children with autism often have a hard time talking with or even looking at human therapists, like this boy. But look at how he lights up with Milo”
“We found that [the children] were engaged with Milo 87% of the time. We also looked at how much they were engaged with the therapist when she tried to talk to them, it was about 3%.”
Full article and video HERE