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Social Robots and Wearable Sensors for Mitigating Meltdowns in Autism - A Pilot Test

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11357))

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Abstract

Young individuals with ASD may exhibit challenging behaviors. Among these, self-injurious behavior (SIB) is the most devastating for a person’s physical health and inclusion within the community. SIB refers to a class of behaviors that an individual inflicts upon himself or herself, which may potentially result in physical injury (e.g. hitting one’s own head with the hand or the wrist, banging one’s head on the wall, biting oneself and pulling out one’s own hair). We evaluate the feasibility of a wrist-wearable sensor in detecting challenging behaviors in a child with autism prior to any visible signs through the monitoring of the child’s heart rate, electrodermal activity, and movements. Furthermore, we evaluate the feasibility of such sensor to be used on an ankle instead of the wrist to reduce harm due to hitting oneself by hands and to improve wearable tolerance. Thus, we conducted two pilot tests. The first test involved a wearable sensor on the wrist of a child with autism. In a second test, we investigated wearable sensors on the wrist and on the ankle of a neurotypical child. Both pilot test results showed that the readings from the wearable sensors correlated with the children’s behaviors that were obtained from the videos taken during the tests. Wearable sensors could provide additional information that can be passed to social robots or to the caregivers for mitigating SIBs.

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Acknowledgments

The work is supported by a research grant from Qatar University under the grant QUST-1-CENG-2018-7. The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan & Ahmad Yaser Alhaddad

  2. College of Electrical Engineering and Control Science, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China

    Ryad Chellali

  3. Department of Educational Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Catherine Wing Chee So

  4. Center for Pediatric Neurology, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Mohammad Aldosari

  5. Step by Step Special Needs Center, Doha, Qatar

    Olcay Connor

  6. Biomedical Engineering Department, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA

    Hifza Javed

  7. Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Ahmad Yaser Alhaddad

Authors
  1. John-John Cabibihan
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  2. Ryad Chellali
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  3. Catherine Wing Chee So
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  4. Mohammad Aldosari
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  5. Olcay Connor
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  6. Ahmad Yaser Alhaddad
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  7. Hifza Javed
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John-John Cabibihan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  2. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. University Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Miguel A. Salichs

  4. Canterbury University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Elizabeth Broadbent

  5. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Alan R. Wagner

  7. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Álvaro Castro-González

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Cabibihan, JJ. et al. (2018). Social Robots and Wearable Sensors for Mitigating Meltdowns in Autism - A Pilot Test. In: Ge, S., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11357. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_11

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