Designing a robot for children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to help them experience the feeling of connection.

“A robot never gets tired of repeating to deliver the same emotional engagement again and again and again. That kind of repetition and consistency is really important to the way that we know that children with autism.”

I was a part of the development and production team to redesign a robot for children ages 5-10. The project aimed to design a play-based activity robot with the most advanced conversational technology by HCI experts, local non-profit organizations, and child development experts. I helped the team to design a skin of a robot to securely hold hardware devices inside of the robot body and managed a small batch of production by hiring my team of students. It was great to be a part of developing a socially assistive robot that provides a bridge to learning for children.

I believe that integrating soft textured skin can thus significantly enhance the expressive spectrum of robots for social interaction. I've been continuously exploring socially innovative product design projects since then.

The final product was released in November 2018 to a client. You can read more about the peerbot from peerbots.com and see a commercialized bot atmoxierobot.com.

I can only present limited information due to non-disclosure agreements.