DREAM Lite: Simplifying Robot Assisted Therapy for ASD

TL;DR

This paper presents DREAM Lite, a simplified robot-assisted therapy framework for ASD that aims to reduce clinician workload while maintaining effective social skill interventions, validated through real-world ecological studies.

Contribution

It introduces a practical, validated approach for delivering robot-assisted therapy to children with ASD within a supervised autonomy framework.

Findings

Effective deployment in real-life settings

Reduced clinician burden demonstrated

Validated intervention protocols

Abstract

Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The DREAM project explores how to deliver effective RAT interventions to ASD children within a supervisedautonomy framework for controlling the robotic agent, which could decrease the burden on the clinicians delivering such interventions. In this paper we describe how to use in real life settings the experimental protocols that were developed and extensively tested in the DREAM Project, as well as their deployment and validation in a new ecological study conducted by clinicians.