The Development of Group Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders using a number of robots.

• Project/Area Number: 17K20097
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Biomedical engineering and related fields
• Research Institution: Kanazawa University
• Principal Investigator: Kumazaki Hirokazu 金沢大学, 子どものこころの発達研究センター, 特任准教授 (70445336)
• Research Collaborator: Matsumoto Yoshio ; Yoshikawa Yuichiro ; Kikuchi Mitsuru ; Yoshimura Yoko
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2019-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2018)
• Budget Amount: ¥6,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,500,000); Fiscal Year 2018: ¥2,080,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥480,000); Fiscal Year 2017: ¥4,420,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,020,000)
• Keywords: 自閉スペクトラム症 / ロボット / 集団療法 / 複数 / 遠隔操作システム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We developed an environment which children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)can concentrate on communicating with plural small robots, CommU. We also developed script about group therapy using CommU. In addition, we compared two groups. One is to communicate with two CommU. The other is to communicate with one CommU. We can show that children with ASD can communicate easily with two robots as well as one robot.

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

臨床現場において1対1の人間関係にはさほど問題ないが、集団での人間関係は困難なケースは多い。現在までの集団療法の成績が芳しくなかった中で、本研究ではASD児が複数体のCommUと負担なくコミュニケーションできることが示された。CommUを用いた集団療法が確立できれば、ASD児が複数の動く物体という設定に慣れ、楽しさを理解し、集団適応の悪い児の多くにとって集団参加の契機となり、治療成績の飛躍的な向上が期待される。

Research Products

• [Int'l Joint Research] ヴァンダービルト大学(米国)
• [Journal Article] Brief report: A novel system to evaluate autism spectrum disorders using two humanoid robots. (2019)
  • Author(s): Kumazaki H, Muramatsu T, Yoshikawa Y, Yoshimura Y, Ikeda T, Hasegawa C, Saito ND, Shimaya J, Ishiguro H, Mimura M, Kikuchi M.
  • Journal Title: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Volume: 49(4) Issue: 4 Pages: 1709-1716
  • DOI: 10.1007/s10803-018-3848-7
  • Peer Reviewed / Open Access