A Multimodal Robotic Communication System for Students with Profound and Multiple Disabilities

الملخص

Different researches claim that using a robot to
play with students with profound and multiple disabilities
might be a valuable tool to increase the learning curve of
those students. Robots in schools and in other educational
environments is a growing research field and it seems that it
is time for technology to transform the education with
people of special needs similarly to how technology affected
mainstream education. The project focuses on using
different switches plugged in a joybox to send signals to
NAO Robot. Each switch caries a certain behavior. JoyBox
contains eight numbered connectors and four direction
connectors to move the robot. The paper implements client
server communication to connect to the robot and be able to
send signals to the robot via the switches connected to the
JoyBox. Using the switch enables the users to communicate
to NAO independently. This gauntness a deep level of
engagement with the robot, since the robot moves based on
the singles received from the switches. The paper describes
the setup of the client server communication, and the robot
knows which behaviour to implement next. This study
implements a case study evaluated by only four researchers
and staff from Oakfield school to evaluate the software .This
study hopes to be able to assess the needs of school staff to
improve communicational methods for students with
profound and multiple disabilities.