A Tool to Diagnose Autism in Children Aged Between Two to Five Old: An Exploratory Study with the Robot QueBall

Julie Golliot (1) , Tamie Salter , Catherine Raby-Nahas , Mark Vezina , Yves-Marie Merat , Bianca Côté , Cynthia Duclos , Maryse Lavoie , Audrée-Jeanne Beaudoin , Mélanie Couture , François Michaud

1 ENSC - Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique

QueBall is a spherical robot capable of motion and equipped with touch sensors, multi-colored lights, sounds, and a wireless interface with an iOS device. While these capabilities may be useful in assisting the early diagnosis of autism, no detailed guidelines have yet been established to achieve this. In this report, we described the exploratory study conducted with an interdisciplinary research team to adapt QueBall's capabilities in order to have clinicians observe how children interact with QueBall. This is the preliminary phase in designing an experimental protocol to evaluate the use of QueBall in diagnosing autism for children from two to five years of age.

Mots clés: Children with Autism; Experimentation; Exploratory Study; Spherical Robot

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique; Psychologie; Neurosciences

Julie Golliot, Tamie Salter, Catherine Raby-Nahas, Mark Vezina, Yves-Marie Merat, et al.. A Tool to Diagnose Autism in Children Aged Between Two to Five Old: An Exploratory Study with the Robot QueBall. Human Robot Interaction, the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference, Mar 2015, Portland, United States. ⟨10.1145/2701973.2701975⟩. ⟨hal-02875196⟩