abstract
- © 2017 IEEE. Technology is a valuable tool for the treatment of autism in children. It can enhance the therapy, providing a new social channel of interaction in a friendly and controlled environment. This paper proposes an integral technological platform based on two main elements. The first one is a robot, specifically designed to collaborate in the intervention process eliciting pro-social behavior, and a tablet application program, explicitly intended to complement the intervention activities with the robot, giving at the same time administration support to the therapist offering information about the statistical performance of the child during the intervention. On the other hand, fuzzy logic systems are implemented in the technological platform to increase the performance in the robot and the tablet. Fuzzy logic includes an inference system based on linguistic rules that help therapist to interact with the children when they are taking the integral therapy because the inference system can cover different social situations in automatic way. This paper shows the complete design of the robot and tablet application as the main supported tools. The social skill therapy is designed and implemented to different children with autism. Moreover, fuzzy logic demonstrated that is a robust system for dealing with uncertainties so that the robot can generate a correct response according with the input signal from the child. Finally, the preliminary results give a good insight about the potential of this proposed integral therapy. In addition, fuzzy logic is a principal component for designing the therapy.