'''Article:''' Effects of repeated exposure to a humanoid robot on children with autism by Ben Robins, Kerstin Dautenhahn, R. te Boekhorst, and A. Billard

'''Introduction to paper:'''

Robota (a girl doll robot) was used with autistic children. She danced by herself the first few sessions (to allow the child to become accustomed to her) then she started playing imitation games. They hoped to get her to watch and autonomously imitate the child, but weren't able to, so they manually controlled her. Robota worked as an object of shared attention between child and teacher, and eventually even between child and investigator/experimenter.

'''Application to personal research:'''

This paper brought up the issue of needing the child to remain still for imaging software to accurately track and imitate him/her. They knew that it would be best to let the child move around unrestricted, so they chose to have the investigator/experimenter control the robot as a puppet in order to get it to imitate the child. We can display a 3D model of the robot, on a remote device, that can be manipulated with a stylus, for the clinician/therapist to control the robot like a puppet. Another option is to have an adult in another part of the room imitating the child, but standing still, in-front of a camera, which would give the imaging software a better chance at tracking and imitating (as proposed by Dr. Goodrich).

'''Questions:'''

• When Robota was first introduced (as a dancer) she was in a black, open box. As an imitator, she wasn't in a box. Why?
• Robota was designed with the abilities of typically developing children in mind - including “speech, music and movement” functionalities. Tasks using these additional functionalities would lie in the impairment of ASD, so they weren't used when interacting with autistic children.
• : What strengths DO autistic children have?
• : How can we design robot functionalities and tasks that utilize the strengths of children with ASD?

'''Additional notes from paper:'''

• Children with ASD have a hard time keeping still so experiments need to be designed to allow the child freedom to move around and yet still be as involved in the experiment as possible

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