Developing an Initial Model of Cat Robot Utilizing an Eco-friendly
Materials for the Use of Early Treatment of Children with Autism
Spectrum Disorder
Ja Young Kwon
1
, Keum-hi Mun
2
, Bo Hee Lee
3
and Jin Soun Jung
4
1
Department of Social Welfare, Semyung University, Jecheon-si, R. O. Korea,
2
Department of Industrial Design, Semyung University, Jecheon-si, R. O. Korea,
3
Department of Electrical Engineering, Semyung University, Jecheon-si, R. O. Korea,
4
Department of Fashion Design, Semyung University, Jecheon-si, R. O. Korea,
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Clinical Component, Design Research of a Cat Robot, Imitate Human’s
Behaviour, Functional Green Environment Fabric.
Abstract: The purpose of this research is to develop an initial model for the use of early treatment that will improve
the social interactions of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Researchers from the department
of social welfare, electrical engineering, industrial design, and fashion design carried out a fusion research
for this purpose. The department of social welfare conducted a survey with professional therapists in order
to first find out the necessary treatment components of the cat robot. The department of electrical
engineering gave technical suggestions on the practical functions of the robot such as movements and
emotional exchanges with humans. In addition, the department of industrial design proposed the robot’s
exterior, movement, and character designs. Considering that the robot will be used as a therapeutic medium
for children, they also developed an eco-friendly material in order to prevent infection and other hygienic
problems and also improve the therapeutic effects of the robot. A follow-up study is proposed.
1 INTRODUCTION
ASD is reportedly the fastest spreading childhood
disorder (Autism Society of America, 2008). It is
known that one in 150 children is diagnosed with
ASD (Center for Disease Control, 2008). The main
characteristics of children with ASD are that they
have social interaction disabilities, communication
disabilities, repetitive stereotypy behaviours, and
limited attention spans.
There have been a few endeavors and some
attention about using robots as a treatment medium
for autistic children recently, such as KASPER,
Probo. Therapeutic approaches of ASD that use
robots commonly show that robots were able to
draw out high levels of social interactions from the
children with ASD (Robin et al., 2005; Feil-Seifer
and Matric ,2008). There were several researches in
Korea as well. The first one to apply robots in the
treatment of developmental disorders was Cho,
Kwon, and Shin (2009). This research conducted
one ten-minute session per week for eight weeks
where adolescents with ASD interacted with
humanoid robots. It was discovered that these
adolescents interacted actively with the robots. Kim,
et al’s study(2010) on the response of autistic
children through interactions with robots showed
that robots have a positive effect on children such as
increased eye contact, attention, and concentration
with teachers. Therefore, these study results show
that robots as a medium for treating and educating
children with ASD can be effective.
Robot development is a convergence technology
that is impossible with just one field of study
researching it. It is important, as an early treatment
medium for children with ASD, to figure out the
assisting role of the robot by first analyzing the
user’s disability and lifestyle. A multi-disciplinary
research, ranging from robotic technology, exterior
design, material design, and development of
emotion-based treatment programs, is necessary for
the development of a cat robot model that can be
used for the early treatment of children with ASD.
186
Kwon J., Mun K., Lee B. and Jung J..
Developing an Initial Model of Cat Robot Utilizing an Eco-friendly Materials for the Use of Early Treatment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
DOI: 10.5220/0004826101860191
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Pervasive and Embedded Computing and Communication Systems (PECCS-2014), pages
186-191
ISBN: 978-989-758-000-0
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Therefore, this research is composed of researchers
throughout the department of social welfare,
electrical engineering, industrial design, and fashion
design in order to develop an initial model for an
eco-friendly cat robot for the use of early treatment
of children with ASD.
2 BASIC DESIGN AND
REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS
2.1 Clinical Components of a Cat
Robot Required for the Early
Treatment of Autism Spectrum
Disorder
Cross-academic professional clinicians were focus-
group interviewed twice and guardians were focus-
group interviewed once to investigate the necessary
clinical components of the cat robot for the use of
early treatment of children with ASD. Table 1
provides personal information about the participants
of the FGI. Two series of FGI records were all
recorded and transcribed, and summarized and
organized into common categories.
Table 1: Background for FGI participants.
Gen-
der
Age Educ-
ation
Areas of
expertise
Career
(Year)
Session
1
F 34 B.A Special education 9
M 44 B.A Speech therapy 21
F 45 M.A Psychology 8.4
F 55 M.A Medical Doctor 28
F 29 B.A Occupational therapy 5.5
M 42 M.A Rehabilitation therapy 15
F 46 M.A Physical therapy 23
F 38 M.S.W Social Work 14.8
F 31 B.A Occupational therapy 6
Session
2
F 30 B.A Occupational therapy 3
F 35 M.A Art Therapy 6
As a therapeutic medium, the cat robot must consist
of several therapeutic components.
First, it must be able to act and express emotions
appropriate to the situations in order to socially
behave and interact with children with ASD. As for
emotional expressions, they can be generally divided
into two strands: positive and negative emotional
expressions. These expressions should include joy,
sadness, anger, surprise, and various other changes
of emotions. Additional auditory effects, if possible,
would be desirable. These functions will allow
children to experience positive reactions to their own
positive behaviour and negative reactions to their
own negative behaviour, bringing about educational
and imitational effects for the children, which will
help them to become aware of other people’s
positive and negative responses.
Second, it must increase social behaviours. The
interactions between the cat robot and children with
ASD should expedite joint attention. For example, it
must be able to make movements that can draw out
behaviours such as pointing at the robot or looking
in the direction of the robot. It would also be
desirable if it could react differently depending on
how it is touched. For example, if it is touched softly,
it could wag its tails or cry sweetly and if it is
touched roughly, then it could raise its tail, scream
sharply, or redden its face. It should increase
physical contact such as hugging or touching
behaviours.
Third, it should be able to move in a way to
increase eye-contact or provide other visual stimulus.
It should be able to motivate movements such as
meeting the eye, holding eye-contact, responding
“yes” when called, or turning the head in the robot’s
direction.
Fourth, it needs a function where the robot can
imitate the child’s actions in order to attract the
child’s attention. Furthermore, it would be desirable
if there was a turn-taking function where the child
can wait for the robot’s reaction and they can take
turns reacting to each other’s actions.
2.2 Design Research for an Initial
Model
2.2.1 Appearance Design of a Cat Robot
Basically, an appearance of cat robot must be looked
like one of cat. An appearance of cat is composed of
the head, body, arms, legs and a tail. When
designing the appearance of cat robot, it need be
studied about what the desirable proportion of each
part is. It must be studied for the preference and
recognition as to this appearance’s proportion and
shape. Also, for the cat robot to take several
personified actions, there need many sensors and
driven motors. Due to these environmental
conditions, the proportions of cat robot could change,
compared to the real.
DevelopinganInitialModelofCatRobotUtilizinganEco-friendlyMaterialsfortheUseofEarlyTreatmentofChildren
withAutismSpectrumDisorder
187
2.2.2 Behaviour Design of a Cat Robot
For the design of a cat robot, cat’s action must be
concerned first of all. A cat should have various
emotions and show its emotions with whole body
such as facial expressions, tail, ears, acts and etc.
But, for the early treatment of children with ASD,
not only behavioural act of a cat but also personified
act such as ‘hugging’, ‘eye contact’, ‘parrotry’ and
‘reaction to an inappropriate act’ etc. must be applied.
To hug like a man, the first pose of a cat robot must
be shaped in a seating posture with its hind legs
stretched forward and its forelegs upright.
2.2.3 Character Design of a Cat Robot
The character of a cat robot, for the early treatment
of children with ASD, needs to be personified for
looks like not a cat’s character but a human’s
character (Disalvo, Gemperle, and Folizzi, 2004).
Applying personification which projects a shape of
an animal or a human onto the shape of a robot has a
man come close to a robot better friendly, and makes
the character of a robot to be delivered to a man
through an appearance or movement in an easier
(Disalvo, Gemperle, and Folizzi, 2004). When
applying the personification of a cat robot, the
character of both an animal and a human must be
considered. Because, in the animal personification,
non-verbal communication area such as shape of
appearance, non-verbal act of a man and behaviour
act of an animal are very important. The important
elements that reveal the character of a cat are a
direction of expressions and a handling of eyes. The
expression of both an animal and a human presents
an internal emotion. Lee(2003) analyzed the existing
studies to abstract a fear, an anger, a sorrow, a
happiness and a disgust as common emotions of a
man, to develop the tool for the management of
robot’s reacting motion. On this study, it would be
proceed with five emotional expression of a cat
robot substituting disgust with an interest. With
regards to the early treatment of children with ASD,
the expression with simple and basic essentials
would be considered more effective than too much
emotional expression.
2.2.4 Early Sketch of a Cat Robot
Early sketch has been progressed for the appearance
design of a cat robot. The usual figure of a cat robot
was set up as a figure of seating posture with its hind
legs stretched forward and its forelegs upright. As
you see, it was the easier posture to make an eye
contact/hug with the children and follow the motion
of children. The usual expression of a cat robot was
set up as soft, friendly and tender. Because, it was
studied that the warmer and tender of the robot’s
appearance like a friend, the more gain the sympathy
(Kwak and Kim, 2009).
‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’
Figure 1: 3 Sketches of a cat robot.
Among these three sketches, the most sympathetic
proposal ‘C’ was developed by a 3D rendering for
making an early mock-up.
Figure 2: 3D Rendering of a cat robot.
2.3 Mechanical and Electrical Design
of Cat Robot
Main action of the cat robot is focused on the
operation that can be allowed to do eye contact and
imitate human’s behaviour. All of the actions are
realized by driving electrical motors at the joints as
shown in Figure 3. It has a pitch and yaw joint in the
neck, and a roll joint at the waist in order to turn
toward the user. A pitch joint at femur is installed to
raise and pay back body. It can also be able to shake
a tail from side to side. In order to realize human
behaviour, it is required some arm motions having a
yaw and pitch joint in the shoulder, and a pitch joint
at elbow. The size of the front legs and available
torque of the motor are not determined because they
have some dependency related with the body size
and weight. The action of hind leg has little
skeleton only considering the center of gravity,
which was fixed at the ground surface.
PECCS2014-InternationalConferenceonPervasiveandEmbeddedComputingandCommunicationSystems
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Figure 3: Joint allocation.
Table 2: Joint.
b
ody par
t
joint motion action
neck pitch, yaw
look at someone and
turn to the children
wais
t
roll
foreleg pitch, yaw
make simple gesture
elbow
p
itch
pelvis pitch tilt body
tail yaw wave
Facial expression is to get back the result of social
learning rather than expression of the fun. Autistic
children has some disabilities to read subtle changes
appeared in the expression of others. In this study,
typical emotional expression method that is based on
the presentation by Ekman(1978, 1983), is suggested
and can be able to repeat emotional learning. The
facial expression is created with using ears, eyes and
lip of the robot as shown in Figure 4. The response
action like flashing eyes and eyebrows are also
deployed in the face. In addition, up and down
motions of lip edge are given to express the
emotional status of the robot.
Sensors system that can detect a child's response
is also suggested. The reaction from the user should
primarily be generated by touching and slapping of
the body through some pressure sensor and
capacitive sensor. They are installed in the site of the
forehead and cheeks and placed at paws or tail after
reviewing the circuit wiring in the future. The
difficulty shown in following the behaviour of
human is coming from the technology limitation of
image recognition technology and this action has
replaced by human control using the remote
controller. The sensor measuring the distance
between an obstacle and children, and the moving
direction sensor are deployed in the face. To give the
reaction from the voice and sound, sound sensors are
used in the both side of the body and it can be able
to communicate with the children using simple
words. Figure 5 shows the sensor arrangement and
what kinds of sensor systems are used.
Figure 4: Facial expressions.
Table 3: Face behaviour.
face part Action
lid open , blind, little blind
eyebrow change shapes
lip up and down the lip edge
lip edge transform up and down
ear wave back and forth
Table 4: Sensor measurement.
part position sensing
face
head
touch and hit
cheeks
beard Touch
ear loud applause or voice
forehead human body
body
back
touch and hit
forelegs
tail
internal
facial expression
(sadness, delight and joy)
device external remote control
Figure 5: Sensor arrangements.
DevelopinganInitialModelofCatRobotUtilizinganEco-friendlyMaterialsfortheUseofEarlyTreatmentofChildren
withAutismSpectrumDisorder
189
2.4 Functional Green Environment
Fabric Study on Cat Robot
Development Base
Essential oils in herb have been long used as
fragrances and flavoring in the perfume and food
industries, respectively, and more recently for
aromatherapy and as herbal medicines (Bucke, 2003;
Enan, 2001; Isman, 2006). Also their products are
generally considered to have abroad spectrum
because of the presence of several active ingredients
that operate through insecticide activity(Isman,
2000). Therefore developing a functional green
environment fabric that has aromaticity as well as
insecticidal effects against
house dust mite by using
ethanol extract of three herb teas and cacao, will
help the sanitation and therapy for children with
ASD.
2.4.1 Materials and Methods
Plant materials and extract
Mate tea was purchased at the E-mart department
store, Jecheon, Korea. Jasmine tea and jasmine petal
tea were purchased via the internet, http://www.hom
erose.co.kr/.
Each plant material(30g) was extracted twice
with 300mℓ ethanol for 24 hours at room
temperature. Each plant extract was evaporated at
40±2℃ and 30mmHg by using evaporator and was
obtained crude extract. Each crude extract was used
as sample for insecticidal effect.
House dust mite and rearing
The mites were reared on ebioze powder mixed
with mouse feed(2:1). The cultures were maintained
in incubator at 25±1℃ and RH 70 ~ 75%.
Insecticidal effect test against four plant’s
ethanol extract
Insecticidal effect test was applied by direct
contact method. Different concentrations(1.0, 0.5,
0.25, and 0.012mg/tube) of each plant’s crude
extract were prepared by dissolving with 40㎕ of
ethanol in 2mℓ tube. And ethanol of each tube was
volatilized. Then 25 mites were introduced into the
volatilized each tube. And the tubes were maintained
in incubator at 25±1℃ and RH 70~75%. Control
was treated by 40㎕ of ethanol only in 2mℓ tube.
Under the conditions, each tube including control
was exposed for 24hours. After 24 hours, the dead
mites are counted by using an electron
microscope(×20). The rate of insecticidal effect of
each plant’s crude extract was calculated as the ratio
of died mites to total mites.
2.4.2 Result
Insecticidal effect against house dust mite,
Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus from ethanol
extracts of four plants are shown in Table 5.
Insecticidal rate values between 35.46 and 100%
were obtained at different concentrations of ethanol
mate tea extract. The ethanolic jasmine tea extract
and jasmine petal tea all showed insecticidal
rate of 40~100% at different concentrations.
Insecticidal rate values between 10.50 and 100%
were obtained at different concentrations of
ethanolic cacao extract. At 1.0mg/tube and
0.5mg/tube concentration, ethanol extracts of four
plants resulted in a high mortality rate of 93.01~
100%.
Table 5: Insecticidal effect of ethanol extracts of four plant
species against house dust mite, Dermatophagoides
pteronyssinus.
Plant
material
Concentration
(mg/tube)
Mortality(%)
a
Mate tea
1.0 100
0.5 98.00
0.25 54.29
0.125 35.46
Jasmine
tea
1.0 100
0.5 100
0.25 100
0.125 40
Jasmine
petal tea
1.0 100
0.5 100
0.25 91.25
0.125 40
Cacao
1.0 100
0.5 93.01
0.25 83.33
0.125 10.50
a
(remained mites/Total mites) × 100.
3 CONCLUSIONS
The therapeutic components required of a cat robot
PECCS2014-InternationalConferenceonPervasiveandEmbeddedComputingandCommunicationSystems
190
for the use of early treatment of children with ASD
are the ability to express various emotions, to carry
out social behaviours, to hold eye contact with the
children, and to imitate actions. When designing, the
concept of appearance, behaviour and character are
to be set up preferentially. For the design of an
appearance, a proportion of head, body and tail
including ears and face as well as forehead, eyes,
nose, mouth and chin must be studied. For the
design of behaviour, the relationship between
emotional expression and an action must be grasped.
Also, an effective action must be investigated and
established for an early treatment of children with
ASD. For the design of character, it needs a
personification. A desirable method of
personification must be established considered with
the characters of both animal and human.
Joint movement, facial expression, and sensory
system were proposed in order to realize their
function including how to install and control the
body. The proposed robot will have 8 joints in the
body, 8 joints in the face, and be deployed over than
10 kinds of sensory system with sound management
and touch detection.
The insecticidal effect against house dust
mite of ethanol extracts from three herb teas
and cacao was examined in the study for
developing an eco-friendly material. An effort
to sophisticate this early developmental model
must be continued. Follow-up studies that take
this early developmental cat model and evaluate
its effectiveness and improve its weaknesses
through actual experiments should be carried
out.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the National Research
Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean
Government (NRF-2013R1A2A2A04014808).
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