KASPAR is a child-sized humanoid robot designed to help teachers and parents support children with autism. His facial features have been purposefully designed with less complexities of human expression to facilitate interaction with students.
KASPAR has been designed for use as a social mediator, encouraging and helping children with autism to interact and communicate with adults and other children. Our students responded very positively to KASPAR. Some students enjoyed touching his feet which are programmed with sensors to respond by saying “that tickles my feet”. This encouraged increased engagement and response from our students. They were able to touch his hands and tummy, each giving a response which in turn resulted in a response from the student.
KASPAR would laugh and say he was happy and some students laughed in response while others repeated the phrase verbally. Many students were fascinated by his eyes and blinked in response to the robots blinks. One student hit the tummy and KASPAR was able to say “Ow that hurt my tummy” thereby presenting a teaching opportunity to develop social skills. The student responded by gently touching the robot.
KASPAR has a remote which can either be used by the facilitating adult or by the student themselves. The remote has symbols to facilitate the students’ independence and increase their control of the robot. One student in particular enjoyed using the remote independently to activate various actions, responding and maintaining attention for an extended period of time.
KASPAR has the ability to engage in a range of interactive play scenarios, such as turn-taking or shared-gaze activities, which children with autism often find difficult to understand or perform. Some of our students where able to copy body positions modelled by KASPAR as well as sing along to “If you’re happy and you know it” and copying the robots actions and verbal instructions. KASPAR had a tambourine and individual students were given one too and encouraged to echo the rhythms KASPAR tapped out, which the students loved doing.
Read more about KASPAR here : http://www.herts.ac.uk/kaspar/introducing-kaspar/friends-of-kaspa
Shauneen Ternahan
Teacher, Wingrave
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