QTrobot Encourages Children with Autism to Engage in Educational Activities

Developed in 2016, LuxAI was based on a proof of concept project on Programming Cognitive Robots, which focuses on providing access and more affordable specialized interventions for children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The project was funded by the Fund National Research of Luxemburg. 

What is QTrobot

The first-ever product developed by LuxAI was QTrobot, which aims to act as a medium to interact with children with autism. This in turn encourages them to engage in educational activities, and it helps facilitate teaching in these circumstances. 

The other major goal of QTrobot’s development was to make scientific, standard, and evidence-based practices scalable. This is achieved by enabling specialized therapists to develop personalized educational lessons, as well as helping non-specialized care-givers and parents conduct them.

Research on QTRobot’s ability to improve learning for children with autism was published in IEEE RO-MAN. 

It demonstrated the QTrobot helps children have higher attention levels, longer gaze durations, and exhibit less stereotypical behaviors during training sessions. The time it takes another person to do the same activity was recorded. QTrobot then provided emotional ability training for children with autism. 

After seven weeks of regular training sessions of one hour each, the children exhibited improved mental health, less internalized issues like depression and anxiety brought on by emotional difficulties, and there was a reduction in their emotion related symptomatology. 

The results of the research was published in the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR 2019). 

Current Uses of QTrobot

QTrobot has been used by hundreds of autism and special needs centers and research groups, starting in 2018. These current results have validated previous scientific results, and QTrobot has demonstrated its ability to assist in these areas.

The educational curricula paired with QTrobot are designed and based around certain crucial skills, such as social, emotional, communication, and cognitive skills. They are built around evidence-based methods and aligned with developmental milestones, specifically targeting those common among children with autism. 

The QTrobot is now offering an at-home version after working with organizations for several years. The Beta-Release has shown to be successful with a limited number of parents, and the focus is to achieve the same result seen in the organizations. Parents used the QTrobot for five nights each week for the past 15 months.