In this episode we interview Kerstin Dautenhahn who is Research Professor in the School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at University of Hertfordshire in the UK, where she is a coordinator of the Adaptive Systems Research Group. Autism is a developmental disorder affecting around 91 people in every 10,000, mainly causing difficulties in social interactions, communication and imagination. Using therapy robots in the AuRoRA project, Dautenhahn has been pushing autistic children to learn essential social skills such as turn taking, joint attention and imitation. Armed with a lot of patience and zeal, her team has been adapting their robots and therapy sessions to each individual child, whether it’s about playing with wheeled robots or Dautenhahn’s toddler-sized Kaspar humanoid. She also presents her new project on Interactive RObotic social MEdiators as Companions (IROMEC) which looks at how autistic children can learn to cooperate and interact with each other through the introduction of a robotic mediator.

Related episodes:

• Robots: Online Human-Robot Interactions -- 4 June, 2010
• Robots: The Nao Humanoid -- 21 May, 2010
• Robots: 50 Years of Robotics (Part 1) -- 23 April, 2010
• Robots: New Year’s Special -- 1 January, 2010
• Robots: Weight-Loss Coach -- 18 December, 2009