Robots That Teach Us about Ourselves
From: Bioscience Technology - 10/29/2015

Janie, a quiet twelve-year-old girl sits at the table, her hands dropped
casually in her lap. She doesn't turn to face you as you walk across the room
and sit in the chair beside her. When you ask a question, she won't meet your
eyes, and she repeats your words back to you, seemingly noncommittal and
uninvolved in the conversation.

Janie is autistic.

But when you put the blue, fuzzy robot dinosaur on the table, the therapeutic
session begins. Janie and the dinosaur bond within minutes as the dinosaur
fearfully tries to cross an imaginary river that runs along the table. The
dinosaur is scared of the river, but Janie is encouraging. "You can do it,"
she said, enthusiastically, sympathetically. "You can do it."

Brian Scassellati, professor of computer science and mechanical engineering &
materials science, designed this session to teach autistic children how to
use appropriate tone of voice — one of many ways Scassellati's Social
Robotics Lab uses technology to study people and improve their lives.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2015/10/robots-teach-us-about-ourselves

Links:
Robots that learn us about ourselves
http://www.nzhealthtec.com/robots-that-teach-us-about-ourselves

Brian Scassellati
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/scaz

Social Robotics Lab
http://scazlab.yale.edu

Keepon
http://www.mykeepon.com