Using Robots to Teach Musical Rhythms to Typically Developing Children and Children with Autism

Robot assisted therapies offer promise as training and educational tools for facilitating learning in children. Music training or therapy is often provided to school-age children. We are using commercially available humanoid robots to systematize music training sessions by providing consistent repetitive training that is also spontaneous and interactive. We use an embodied approach to musical training whernin the robot progresses from whole body rhythmic actions to finer drumming actions. In order to minimize the amount of control and energy needed to create rich sounds we took advantage of the forces in the system. In this way the robot was able to produce complex dynamics with minimal control. We were able to create multiple themes as basic behaviors. 10 typically developing children interacted with Nao across 12 rhythm training sessions within a robot-child-child context. Pre-, mid- and posttest data have been collected to examine the child's motor patterns during whole body action and drumming. Preliminary analyses are currently ongoing. We hypothesize that the children will improve their intralimb and interlimb coordination during rhythmic actions such as marching, clapping, and drumming following training. We also hypothesize that social interactions such as conversation bouts and rates of joint attention bids will increase across training sessions. Overall, we believe that the rhythm intervention context developed with a 23-inch tall humanoid robot called Nao (Aldebaran Robotics, Inc.) is a highly engaging context for children to facilitate social communication and motor skills. Robot child interaction based training shows promise as a modality for skills training and education.