The Bible Tells me so…
By: Utkarsha Malkar
Tags: Special Needs, Robotics, Special Education, Education, Artificial Intelligence

“The meek shall inherit the land, And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace…”

“Mongoloid baby?” I still remember the shock with which my sister received the doctor’s judgement in her sixth month of pregnancy, what ensued over the decades is a series of special classes and much anguish in finding the right learning aids for her child suffering from ‘Down syndrome.

Pic Credit: Olesia Bilkei

In modern culture, the term ‘meek’ might conjure up the image of a people who are indeed disadvantaged. However, as a new world order emerges from the ashes of 2020, many can look at AI as the next saviour.

AIML has taken the Education sector by storm with technologies that range from Intelligent Tutoring Systems to Visual Facilitators to Teacher and AI collaborations. While there is extensive research continuously ongoing within this field, its subcategory, Special Education, has not reached the same stage of advanced development.

AI is especially influential for children who need special education. These children mostly have one type of learning disability, so they have some impairments in social skills like language and communication or they have trouble in reading, writing and math.

Communication Designers Ekansha Lalwani & Aalisha Kanani -ISDI Parsons (AIML |A Whole New World) speculated during the course of their research, and noticed that a majority of the AIML technology being developed in the education sector did not provide a variety of options for educationally/ physically disabled students as it did for regular children.

Applying the same technology Ekansha Lalwani & Aalisha Kanani -ISDI Parsons (AIML |A Whole New World), speculate a new companion ‘SMIKO’.

Research on the interactive robot Miko 2' and its founding company Emotix, it is was more appropriate and practical to design a solution along these lines and create a robot similar to Miko, but with features specifically designed and aimed for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Ekansha Lalwani & Aalisha Kanani — SMIKO’ An Interactive Robot for Children with special needs.

SMIKO’ is an expressive robot designed and built based on scientific approaches to assist in teaching new skills to children with autism and special educational needs. It is designed to be engaging and easy to understand tool for children with autism. SMIKO’ can show facial expressions, gestures and body language and also talk with children. It doesn’t just help the child in the learning process but also sings and dances to entertain your child, and enables playing games and narrates stories. It is equipped with a camera, microphones and speakers to interact with humans. It also has an 8-inch LCD screen as a face to show facial expressions and emotion.

SMIKO’ can be personalised in its settings according to the child’s need and behaviour. SMIKO’ could speak in top seven languages of India; English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati.

Working method: SMIKO’ uses interactive educational methods, such as games, role-playing and social narratives to teach and practise new skills in a fun and engaging manner.

Output: It uses simple verbal language to communicate with children. It also combines talking with showing visual stimulus and images in a tablet, to make sure children can fully understand the content of the sessions.

Attractive and Motivating: Often for children with autism, concentration and activities involving shared attention are challenging. SMIKO’ has an engaging character that attracts their attention efficiently and keeps them engaged.

Constant and Predictable: By showing consistent positive and patient attitudes, SMIKO’ reduces children’s anxiety and makes them feel more relaxed. The predictable nature of the robot gives comfort to children and prevents them from getting distracted.

Parental Control: It has enhanced parental/teacher control, where they have greater control over SMIKO’s interaction with your child.

Child and Data Safe: Smiko is completely safe for children! Your child’s data is encrypted and completely protected. The ownership of the data lies in your hands as a parent/teacher.

Tele Connect: SMIKO’ helps one to track your child’s progress while you are away at work. One can have a video call and remotely control your SMIKO’ from work to talk to your child.

Data Collection: Since SMIKO’ is your child’s companion, SMIKO’ can record and document your child’s data and provide personalised reports on progress and health details which can be shared with doctors, specialists, and teachers. The data will be saved on the Smiko App and can be shared via the cloud.

Some technical and design-related changes to make sure the robot is more suited for children with ASD and similar disabilities.

Pic Credit: cristina-gottardi-zGlDzmQkL0Y-unsplash

With the knowledge, we have that 1 in every 60 children in India is diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), our objective is to find a solution that assists them in their daily lives to make them more independent and help them better their social and communication skills. It is essential that we keep in mind aspects like affordability, the sturdiness of materials, and accessibility.

Ekansha Lalwani & Aalisha Kanani — SMIKO’ An Interactive Robot for Children with special needs.

Teacher and AI collaboration

AI has already been applied to education primarily in some tools that help develop skills and testing systems. As AI educational solutions continue to mature, the hope is that AI can help fill needs gaps in learning and teaching and allow schools and teachers to assist children with special needs more than ever before.

A tutoring system needs to learn every kind of way to solve a problem. It needs to learn how to teach problem-solving, not just how to solve problems.