Toward Soft, Robust Robots for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

meltdown is one of the most challenging behaviors of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), where a child could not calm down or too overwhelmed with a certain situation. Because social robots are becoming useful as a therapy tool between the therapist and a child with ASD, as robot designers, we want to anticipate that a robot could be thrown on the floor or to the therapist or caregiver. In addition, we want to investigate how to better protect the robot from being damaged. Typical robots are constructed in plastic material. In this paper, a sample of plastic material and a sample of silicone material were compared in a drop test experiment at the heights of 0.0254 m, 0.5 m, and 1 m. These heights simulate a possible situation where the robot can be dropped. Our result shows the differences in the impact between the silicone and the plastic samples. This work provides a baseline study as a step toward soft, robust robots for children with ASD.