• How can a humanoid robot assist in treating children with Autism in clinical settings?
• Can a toy-look-like humanoid robot (loosely resemble a human) help develop autistic children's capabilities in joint attention?
• How can a therapist “program” the robot in preparation for clinical sessions using a skill/behavior based interactive learning interface?
• What interface techniques help the therapists interact with the robot to better treat children with Autism?
• How does the use of different sensors affect the efficacy of the robot in therapy?

Existing Sensors:

• My understanding is that it does not have any sensors at this moment.

Possible Sensors (could be in lego blocks, or external sensors):

• Range Sensor: Infrared proximity sensor to detect object distances.
• Visual Sensor: A small web cam (or stereo) that enables computer vision algorithms to identify patterns.
• Audio Sensor: (single or multiple directional microphones): Allows audio signals detection from different directions. Possibly voice commands.
• Touch Sensor: Detects touches from the user. Could be on the belly, back, or on the head.
• Position Sensor (wii remotes): Detects locations of the operator's elbows, wrists, etc. The therapist will be holding the wii remotes.
• Motion Sensor (wii remote): Detects the direction of movement from the operator.

Existing Actuators:

• Arm movements: Up, down. 1-DOF for elbow joint and 2-DOF for shoulder joint.

Possible Actuators:

• Speaker: make sounds or speech

• Processing can be done solely on the NXT processor built into the robot
• Processing can also be done on a remote computer via Bluetooth

• Bluetooth communication from remote computer to the controller Lego block
• Bluetooth communication from handheld LEGO block to controller LEGO block

• Arm movements: Arm up/down, extend. Resting arms on tabletop.

• Gestures: Wave, knock on table
• Cognitive behaviors: Imitate
• Movements: Reach out
• Sounds: Make sounds/noises, speak
• Emotions: Excited (arms up and waving quickly), bored (arms resting on tabletop not moving)
• Cognitive behaviors: find face, learn to identify objects, identify direction of sound source
• Social behaviors: Knock on table to get attention.

(Please add here…)