This paper reviews the use of socially interactive robots to assist in the therapy of children with autism. The extent to which the robots were successful in helping the children in their social, emotional, and communication deficits was investigated. Child-robot interactions were scrutinized with respect to the different target behaviours that are to be elicited from a child during therapy. These behaviours were thoroughly examined with respect to a child's development needs. Most importantly, experimental data from the surveyed works were extracted and analyzed in terms of the target behaviours and how each robot was used during a therapy session to achieve these behaviours. The study concludes by categorizing the different therapeutic roles that these robots were observed to play, and highlights the important design features that enable them to achieve high levels of effectiveness in autism therapy.  Keywords
Cabibihan et al. REF presented a survey on the roles and benefits of social robots in the therapy of children with autism.
Why robots? A survey on the roles and benefits of social robots in the therapy of children with autism
International Journal of Social Robotics, 2013, 5(4), 593-618
Psychology Computer Science