Interacting With This Therapy Bot Can Help Children With Autism Perfect Their Social Skills

小盟说：卢森堡大学出身的人工智能机器人公司LuxAI近期发布了一款能够帮助自闭症儿童提高社交能力的机器人QTrobot。这款机器人第一次发布就引起了关注，它能够与自闭症儿童实现人机交互，并且有效提高他们的注意力。让我们一起来了解这个科技向善的典型案例吧！

Source: Kristin Houser, Futurism on August10, 2018

来源：Kristin Houser,Futurism, 2018年8月10日

翻译：Joy

Interacting With This Therapy Bot Can HelpChildren With Autism Perfect Their Social Skills

能够帮助自闭症儿童提升他们的社交能力的疗愈机器人

Source: LuxAI Official Website http://luxai.com

ON THESPECTRUM. A child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) mighthave trouble communicating verbally, paying attention to others, or controllingtheir stress and anxiety. These difficulties can affect the child’s social lifeand their success in school.

自闭症自闭症儿童在语言沟通、注意力或控制压力和焦虑上存在障碍。这些障碍将影响他们的社交生活以及他们在学校的表现。

Now, a team of researchers from robotics startupLuxAI have created QTrobot, a bot designed to help children with autism learnvaluable social skills. They plan to present the results of a QTrobot study atRO-MAN 2018, a symposium on robot and human interactive communication, onAugust 28.

如今，来自机器人创业公司LuxAI的研究团队创造了专门帮助自闭症儿童学习社交技能的机器人QTrobot。他们将在8月28日展示QTrobot在2018年IEEE人机交互研讨会学习的成果。

“CUTIE.”QTrobot is just over two feet tall, with a humanoid body and a screen where aperson’s face would be. Not only can the bot see, hear, and talk, it can alsocommunicate non-verbally, projecting facial expressions onto its screen andgesturing with its body.

“可爱”QTrobot仅仅有2英尺高，它有人形的身体构造以及能够展示表情的头部屏幕。这个机器人不仅能够观察、聆听和交流，他还能进行通过在屏幕上显示面部表情和摆动身体来进行无声交流。

Source:Twitter @QTrobot

For their QTrobot study, the LuxAIresearchers enlisted 15 ASD-diagnosed children between the ages of 4 and 14.These children engaged in two interviews, each less than 5 minutes long, onewith QTrobot and the other with a human.

为了研究QTrobot, LuxAI的研究员招募了15个4-14岁之间被诊断出自闭症的儿童。这些儿童参与了两个采访，分别与QTrobot和人类一起进行。每个采访时间不超过5分钟。

During these sessions, the interviewerstarted by asking the child their name and three questions about themselves.Then, they told the child a short story and asked the child if they liked it.Finally, the interviewer asked the child to imitate them as they made fourgestures (for example, lifting their right arm).

采访过程中，采访人从询问孩子们的名字及其他3个与他们相关的问题开始。然后，他们给孩子们讲一个简短的故事并询问他们是否喜欢这个故事。最后，采访人让孩子们模仿他们做出的4个姿势（比如举起他们的右臂）。

Source: Twitter @QTrobot

HUMAN VS. MACHINE. Theresearchers set out to answer two questions based on these interviews:

·      Did the children pay attention to andimitate the robot as well as they did the human?

·      Did the robot help decrease the children’srepetitive or stereotyped behaviors, such as hand flapping?

人类VS机器基于采访问题，研究员们尝试回答以下两个问题：

ž   孩子们像关注与模仿人类一样关注并模仿机器人吗?

ž   机器人是否有效帮助减少孩子们重复性或刻板的动作，比如拍手？

To determine the answers, the researcherscounted the number of times the child gazed at the interviewer, measuring theduration of each gaze. They also counted the number of times the childeffectively imitated the interviewers’ gestures and the number of times the childengaged in repetitive or stereotyped behaviors, as well as the number ofrepetitions.

为了确认问题的答案，研究员们计算了孩子们凝视采访人的次数，测量每次凝视的时长。他们同样计算了孩子们有效模仿采访人动作的数量、孩子们做出重复性或刻板动作的次数以及重复这些动作的次数。

They found that the children looked at the robot for longeroverall and imitated it just as much as they did the human. The children alsoengaged in fewer repetitive or stereotyped behaviors when they wereinteracting with the bot.

他们发现孩子们总体上观察机器人的时间比观察人类的时间长，在模仿行为中他们也像模仿人类动作一样跟着模仿机器人的动作。同时，孩子们在与机器互动的过程中，重复或刻板的动作出现次数更少。

JUST A NOVELTY? Theresearchers note in their paper that the results suggest that QTrobot could beuseful in helping children with ASD develop social skills. However, there’salso a chance that the short duration of the interviews had an impact on theresults — the children might have lost interest in the bot over a longerperiod of time.

只是噱头吗？研究员在他们论文中表示采访的结果显示出QTrobot在帮助自闭症儿童培养社交能力上是有效的。然而，可能存在的情况是采访时长过短会影响实验的结果，因为孩子们在更长时间内可能对机器人失去兴趣。

And the researchers aren’t sure yet whether using the QT botwould be as beneficial to children with ASD as proven interventions such associal skills classes and cognitive behavioral therapy. They suggest the needfor longer-term studies to really determine QTrobot’s potential, but for now,it looks a robot could be an effective way to improve an ASD-diagnosedchild’s ability tointeract with humans.

研究人员目前也尚未确定使用QTrobot会像已证明有效的干预机制比如社交能力课程和认知行为治疗一样对自闭症儿童治疗有所帮助。他们也认为更长期的研究才能进一步发掘QTrobot的潜力，但就目前情况上看，机器人作为提高自闭症儿童和人类互动能力其中一种方式可能是有效的。

文章来源:https://futurism.com/qtrobot-therapy-bot-autism/