Analyzing the Effectiveness of Standard Human Treatment (SHT) in Comparison to Robotic Enhanced Therapy (RET)

Abstract

This project examines whether humans or robots are better therapists for children with varying degrees of Autism by comparing the Standard Human Treatment (hereafter, SHT) to Robotic Enhanced Therapy (hereafter, RET). An analysis of the standard deviation of eye gaze data from the DREAM Dataset (i.e., a pre-existing experiment that recorded changes in ADOS scores in children based on scripts used in both Human and Robotic intervention methods) revealed that Robotic Enhanced Therapy had a higher standard deviation in eye gaze, showing that the child was more engaged with (and therefore paid more attention to) the robotic therapist in comparison to the human counterpart. This conclusion ultimately serves as an important step forward in the process of finding the most effective intervention method to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (hereafter, ASD) manage the associated symptoms.