Automated Caricature of Robot Expressions in Socially Assistive Human-Robot Interaction

Children with autism spectrum disorder suffer from a deficit that prevents them from observing, interpreting, and learning social cues. Clinical studies in social skills training have proposed methods, such as exaggeration, to enhance autism intervention strategies. Socially assistive robotics is an area of human-robot interaction that has the potential to improve social activity. Inspired by several principles of animation, such as staging, exaggeration, anticipation, and secondary action, we propose the use of caricaturized behaviors for a robot providing social skills training for children with autism. Keywords-Human-robot interaction, socially assistive robotics, autism, caricature, exaggeration, expression, animation.