The Use of Educational Robotics in Autism

Over the last decade, numerous studies have been conducted on the application of robotics to stimulate deficit social and communication skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The contribution aims to understand if and how social robots can be used to support autistic children’s communication and improve their attention and involvement. It is interesting to investigate which technologies could work in order to derive usable reflections in the preparation of future intervention protocols. The paper pursues an exploratory investigation through a Scoping Review aimed at understanding if and how social robots can be used to support the autistic child’s communication, encouraging attention, imitation and the implementation of new social behaviours (Abu Amara et al. 2021). Studies have shown that robots improve the social skills of autistic children, for whom interaction with other people can be disorienting, due to the varied expressiveness of the human face and social signals that are difficult to interpret. The educational robot, programmable according to the child’s needs, facilitates communication by allowing cognitive relief and predictability of action. Attention is also focused more on the robot, maintaining greater eye contact. The support of social robots has proven to be more effective than other ‘technological’ therapies, such as video games or apps: the robot encourages interaction. Unlike other tools such as software, which completely capture children’s attention, humanoid robots facilitate natural face-to-face interactions.