Autism, Anxiety and Socially Assistive Robots

Perry, Erin

Student Work

Autism, Anxiety and Socially Assistive Robots

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The Autism, Anxiety, and Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) MQP combined engineering and psychology to extend the capabilities of the Penguin for Autism Behavioral Intervention (PABI©) robot to provide more comprehensive solutions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children with ASD frequently struggle with feelings of stress and anxiety, so adding mindfulness-based therapy practices into the pre-existing PABI robot framework allows it to teach children emotional regulation techniques as well as social and communication skills. To do so, students developed an algorithm that determines whether a user is feeling stress. If they are, it has the capability to guide the user through ten different mindfulness practices. As a preliminary test of these technologies, the students conducted an experimental study with the PABI robot on college students. The results of this study show that the PABI robot’s mindfulness practices are just as effective as traditional mindfulness practices at relieving stress. The Communicating Results of Engineering Studies MQP was an interdisciplinary MQP with the Autism, Anxiety and SARs MQP and researched the best way to communicate the findings of this experiment to other researchers in the field of SARs, which was identified to be through a scientific journal. The student researched best practices for creating and publishing scientific journal articles and created an example article about the results from the human participant study.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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