Parenting Journal · Volume 2 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Design Path for a Social Robot for Emotional Communication for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Originally published 2023-06-02 · Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) · DOI 10.3390/s23115291 ↗
AI / system type
Expressive social-robot prototype; programmed demonstration, with unvalidated aspirations for autonomous emotional interaction
Direct parenting evidenceDirectly addresses parents or caregiving, including parent studies, syntheses and audits of parenting advice.
The AI connection
The study designed a socially assistive robot for emotional communication, demonstrating programmed expressive behaviors and a proposed interaction framework.
Why this reading matters
Shows how parents’ expertise about sensory comfort and communication can shape robotics while setting clear limits on prototype claims.
Editorial reading guide · Collaboration
Which sensory and communication details would our family need to shape before trying an expressive robot?
Parents contributed practical concerns about sound, materials, safety, language, and comfort to the design of an expressive robot. Those concerns shaped form and interaction choices before the final demonstration. The result is a design pathway and adult evaluation of a prototype, not a demonstration that a robot understood or improved a child’s emotions.
Study context
Parent and specialist input in Chile and Colombia, including questionnaires from 18 parents and five specialists; final usability ratings were chiefly from experts
Age / stage: Parents described autistic children mainly 3–15 years; no child effectiveness sample
Read with three questions
- How did parent feedback influence the robot’s materials, voice, appearance, or behavior?
- Whose views were represented in early design and in the final usability ratings?
- What evidence would distinguish an expressive demonstration from accurate emotional understanding and benefit for autistic children?
Keep the limits in view
Participant roles and phases differed, so counts should not be summed as independent families. Final usability ratings involved only 12 adults, chiefly HCI/HRI experts, including two parents; children did not take part in a controlled outcome evaluation. Autonomous empathy and emotion recognition were design ambitions rather than validated capabilities.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Sandra Cano; Jaime Díaz-Arancibia; Jeferson Arango-López; Julia Elena Libreros; Matías García; Juan Pedro Bandera; Pedro Núñez Trujillo; Suna Bensch (2023). Design Path for a Social Robot for Emotional Communication for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Sensors (Basel, Switzerland). https://doi.org/10.3390/s23115291
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.