Abstract

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) are a group of conditions affecting children’s neurodevelopment with consequences on personal, social, and educational functioning. Social robots have been used in the rehabilitation of children with NDD with encouraging results on learning outcomes. This study aims at understanding how a social robot should act to support caregivers during the rehabilitation of children with NDD. Through a Design-Based-Research approach, we investigate this question by considering the point of view of the most concerned and expert people, i.e., children with NDD and their caregivers. We present here the collaborative and iterative design of R2C3, a social robot used to support caregivers and children during rehabilitation sessions in a learning-by-teaching scenario. 27 caregivers and 6 children participated in the iterative design and/or the evaluation of R2C3, that resulted in the development of a Wizard-of-Oz interface and a library containing 120 robot behaviors. We then studied how caregivers used such behaviors during the rehabilitation sessions. We found they mainly used the robot to provide positive reinforcements to children, to elicit their reflection and knowledge toward shared handwriting activities, and to support children’s error acceptance. However, the utilization of Positive Reinforcement by caregivers tends to decrease significantly as the sessions progress.

中文翻译：

---

R2C3，儿童和护理人员的康复机器人伴侣：针对神经发育障碍儿童的社交机器人的协作设计

摘要

神经发育障碍 (NDD) 是一组影响儿童神经发育的疾病，会对个人、社交和教育功能产生影响。社交机器人已被用于 NDD 儿童的康复中，在学习成果方面取得了令人鼓舞的成果。本研究旨在了解社交机器人应如何在 NDD 儿童康复期间为护理人员提供支持。通过基于设计的研究方法，我们通过考虑最关心的专家人士（即患有 NDD 的儿童及其照顾者）的观点来调查这个问题。我们在这里展示 R2C3 的协作和迭代设计，这是一款社交机器人，用于在边学边学的康复课程中为护理人员和儿童提供支持。 27 名护理人员和 6 名儿童参与了 R2C3 的迭代设计和/或评估，最终开发了 Wizard-of-Oz 界面和包含 120 种机器人行为的库。然后我们研究了护理人员在康复治疗期间如何使用这些行为。我们发现他们主要使用机器人为孩子们提供积极的强化，引发他们对共享手写活动的反思和知识，并支持孩子们接受错误。然而，随着治疗的进展，护理人员对积极强化的使用往往会显着减少。