During the first year of the project’s lifespan, news about the DE-ENIGMA project has already been widely disseminated by practitioners, academics, the robotics industry, press outlets specialized in autism and/or robotics, the autism community and European bodies.
Recently, members from the University of Passau, featuring Prof. Björn Schuller, and PhD Student and Researcher Shahin Amiriparian, produced a short video to explain how the project aims at teaching emotions recognition and expression to children with autism using ‘Zeno’, a humanoid robot developed to improve and support autism therapy.
The project has been featured by different media throughout Europe, such as the British television programme ITV News, the Serbian national channel Radio-televizija Srbije RTS or the Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad. The project was also presented at Autism-Europe’s 11th International Congress in Edinburgh.
Autism-Europe is part of the project, funded by Horizon 2020 (the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation). The main objective is to design effective and user-adaptable styles of robot behaviour for autistic children, leading to more personalised and effective therapies than previously available. The robot will be tested by 130 children under the supervision of a team of psychologists. The project will run until August 2019.