One Page Summary

+me device: a Transitional Wearable Companion

+me is an experimental device, designed as a support tool for therapy with children with ASD. It belongs to the category of Transitional Wearable Companions, a novel concept of robotic-tool characterised by two distinctive features: first, a TWC looks like a tender, soft animal, able to arise emotional attachment and reassuring feelings, like  a "security blanket"; second, it is an embedded robot, responding to child's manipulation with interesting outcomes, like sounds and coloured lights. Where necessary, robot responses can be mediated by a caregiver, who can modify +me outcomes through a control tablet.

Fig 1: Control tablet on left, +me device on right

Fig 2: +me can be worn around neck (illustrative pics)

+me as support tool to foster the development of basic social skills

The device has been developed at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy, ISTC-CNR (www.istc.cnr.it), within the research project "+me: motivating children with Autism Spectrum Disorders to interact socially through the use of Transitional Wearable Companions" (www.plusme.it). The project has no direct funding.

The idea at the base of +me was developed by a team of researchers from ISTC-CNR, in collaboration with neurodevelopmental therapists from Rehabilitation Center INI Divisione Villa Dante.

Fig 3: functional diagram of potential interaction between child and caregiver

The Figure 3 illustrates the main concept of the project: +me is able to produce coloured lights and sounds when caressed on the four paws. In general these type of stimuli are very rewarding for all children, and are able to capture their attention.

Observing child's reactions, the caregiver can modify the +me outcomes, through a control tablet: i.e. he/she can change the colour of the lights or the type of emitted sounds; he/she can even disable or mute some outputs if dysfunctional behaviours are observed (like stereotypes).

So, the caregiver can create several activities, adapting +me behaviours to child's temper. These exercises present a fundamental feature: all of them are based on the shared control of +me: its responses depend in fact on child (through touches) and on caregiver (through mediation by the tablet). That leads us to the key idea: such activities could potentially foster the development of basic social skills, where rewarding, desired +me patterns can be obtained through social collaboration between child and caregiver.

Target of +me device

Target of +me device are small children with ASD involved in the first therapies. As reported by several scientific papers, early intensive rehabilitation interventions can have substantial benefits to children with developmental disorders. This is plausibly due to neural plasticity, which is particularly susceptible of both structural and functional modifications when stimulated by an enriched environment.

Current research

In 2017 we run a preliminary test on 15 typical children, aged between 10 and 34 months. This experiment was necessary to have comparative data about behaviours of typical children when involved in play activities based on +me device. Preliminary results show that children seem to be amused and, importantly, show basic social behaviours like eye-contact and social smiles. A paper about it has been submitted to the International Conference on Autism ICA2018, that will be held in London at September 2018 (abstract accepted).   

In April 2018 we are going to run a first pilot test on a group of children with ASD. The results will be compared with previous ones, and will give a first evaluation of +me efficacy. Experimentation will be run at the Dpt. of Human Neuroscience -Sec. of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry- University of Rome "Sapienza". Such department joined the project at the beginning of 2018.

We are aware that such device needs several further experimentations, in order to evaluate critic issues, as its long-term efficacy on cognitive development of children, and the correct, more responsive, human therapeutic target. Nevertheless, first results and observations seem encouraging.

Main concept of TWC devices is described in the paper "Transitional Wearable Companions: A Novel Concept of Soft Interactive Social Robots to Improve Social Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders".

Activities based on +me involve two participants: the child and the caregiver, who is -in the current experimentation- always a therapist. However the long term project purpose is to teach parents how to use +me with their children during daily interactions. As reported by several papers, families involvement in therapy seem to provide additional positive effects in children (increase in eye contacts, verbal initiations), with collateral benefits on parents themselves (decreased stress, increased signs of competence, higher level of affects).