Robotics continue to find meaningful applications in health care. A.I.-empowered robots in a pilot program in Canada help reduce hospital emergency department wait times and VGo’s telepresence robot augments clinical staff access in a variety of healthcare settings. The VGo robot also helps students who are unable to go to school in person because of medical conditions attend remotely via the Remote Student Robot.
LuxAI‘s QTrobot for Autism is an expressive humanoid robot. The robot helps children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) learn new skills. QTrobot uses its expressive face and upper body movements to help autistic kids how to recognize and understands emotions in themselves and others, along with how to regulate their own emotions. The robot’s LCD display “face” employs simple, exaggerated expressions that are easy for children with ASD to understand. Professionals working with children can control the QTrobot with a graphical interface that runs on an Android mobile device. A separate tablet interface lets the students interact with the robot. QTrobot also has hundreds of hours of educational content that draw on research in autism training. According to Luxai’s research — compared with working with human teachers only — children with ASD who also work with QTRobot have higher levels of attention and engagement while exhibiting much less disruptive behavior.
For children with ASD and their families, anything that helps even a little can be a blessing. The QTrobot’s dual role in helping children understand and cope with emotions and presenting students with regular curriculum materials in a highly engaging way is a double win.
