CU To Use 'patient' Robots To Aid Autistic Kids

Can emotionless robots teach us about emotions? Yes, say researchers at the Chinese University.

They are going to launch a programme to improve the communication and social skills of autistic children with the help of some robots.

During training sessions, the interactive robots called “Humanes” will engage children with role-play activities.

Professor So Wing-chee from the Department of Educational Psychology, who is a leader of the programme, said the robots can be more patient teachers than human beings as they don’t have emotions.

The children may also find the robots easier to understand because they have fewer and simpler facial expressions, So said.

She said previous studies had proved that robots are helpful in improving autistic children’s ability to communicate.

The robots being used in this programme were developed by the tech company NEC in 2018. They can speak Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese. Free training will be held for 130 children aged between 3 and 7, from June to August.