“Autistic children in robot-led and therapist-led conditions performed similarly in terms of task completion: across a group of more than 120 from the UK and Serbia, the DE-ENIGMA robot Zeno appears ‘as good as the therapist’!”
This and other project’s latest research findings has been presented by colleagues from Centre for Research in Autism and Education – CRAE and Autism-Europe at the ‘Innovative Technologies for Autism Spectrum Disorders’ (Congreso ITASD – Tecnologías y Autismo) international conference in Valencia, Spain (30th June – 2nd July), attended by more than 700 delegates. This edition, entitled “Matching technology with people: evidenced-based practice”, looked at how technology can be used to assist persons with autism and their families in their daily lives.
The international congress brought together autism researchers and practitioners from across Europe, and the world, to share and present their current research. The conference aimed to highlight the ways in which evidence-based technological interventions may help autistic people, their families and professionals and covered a range of topics from technological devices and goals to applications.
CRAE partners Dr. Alyssa Alcorn and Eloise Ainger introduced the project and their latest findings from the project and related research, with the presentation “A feasibility study of child-robot interaction during an emotion-recognition training in the UK and Serbia”, and the poster “Robots in the classroom? Special education teachers’ views on using humanoid robots as teaching tools for social and emotional skills”.
In parallel, partners from Autism-Europe Cristina Fernández and Aurélie Baranger explained the project to the numerous professionals who visited the Autism-Europe stand, where different brochures, business cards and other hangouts with information about DE-ENIGMA were distributed.
The DE-ENIGMA project team made the Top Ten Influencers on Twitter, whilst live tweeting over the conference duration, and reached over 1.8 million people worldwide with the latest in autism and technology research!
You can catch up on the presentations and latest conference news by searching for the associated hashtags #ITASD2017 on Twitter and following @DeEnigma_EU
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.