How Four Companies from Four Countries Forged The Powerful Robot-mediated Behavior Intervention Solution Platform for autism.

This week was a landscape changing moment for the advancement of Robot-mediated Behavior Intervention for autism. Three years ago, I discovered that as nation we faced an epidemic in the growth of the number of children impacted with autism. Like many others I thought of autism as only a childhood disease. As I learned more, I came to understand the impact that autism has on the entire lives of children and their families.  And, that these ‘children’ must face the challenge of learning the skills needed to become a self-sufficient, independent adult.  I came to understand that autism is not a disease and that it is a human condition. I have been continually motivated by the dedication of the many therapists, school teachers and parents that I have met along the way.  I decided to see if and what role technology might play in helping meet the challenges.

In my opinion there exists an abundance of researchers and clinicians that contribute mightily to the ‘science’ of diagnosis and care strategies. What I felt was missing was a strategy for those delivering the care. What was currently being done was not sufficiently scalable to meet the rapidly escalating need. The growing volume of the requirements for care are over-whelming the existing care giving resource model. This is true on multiple fronts. Trained care givers are growing in short supply in proportion to the need. Institutions are unable to subsidize the increasing costs of professional care delivery. The medical re-imbursement and insurance systems are playing catch-up while families struggle to afford early diagnosis and arrange early care. Early care being one of the best mediations.

Even on the corporate front the recognition that a new model is needed is growing. 

Corporate programs are starting to emerge. If employing individuals on the autism spectrum is becoming a need and a value- based element of corporate and community responsibility, then special educational and training programs are needed to guide managers and create successful management policies that positively embrace employees with autism in their employee base.

So, the framework of a structural response by and with technology started to reveal itself. I called it the 1-2-3 model and I searched the world to build it.

One. From Japan, I landed upon the use of the NAO social robot from SoftBank Robotics to deliver robot-based mediated behavior interventions. The NAO robot was engaging to many children with autism. The robots were in many circumstances, calming. They were non-threatening. They didn’t tire. They didn’t grow or convey frustration. They could be made to deliver sessions customized to the needs and conditions of an individual child. And, they worked!

Two. The next step was to find a robot-based system that could be operated by non-technical personnel in a common school classroom. That has now been accomplished with askNAO a computer tablet-based system from ERM Robotique in France that easily and quickly connects to the robot and with ‘one touch icons’ be made to deliver an intervention session.

Three. A comprehensive autism therapy practice management system was needed to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and lower the cost of therapy practice operations and care delivery. Integration with the robot and the behaviors was needed. That is now available with TN ActiveCare from Canadian Company TN NORTH.

So here we are ChartaCloud ROBOTTECA in the U.S. now deploying, installing and training end users on a platform that can deliver results in autism therapies, expand delivery resource capacity and lower delivery costs.

I call what has happened - landscape changing. If you would like to learn more about the detailed elements of this platform please message me at mike@chartacloud.com I’d be happy to send you a detailed solution brief.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board of ChartaCloud | ROBOTTECA www.robotteca.com

My Five Most Amazing Moments with A Robot

As I continue to engage in the ‘real world’ of robot use cases…oh? what do I mean ‘real world’? – I mean the actual things that are truly being done, really happening…not theory, not speculations…real stuff, happening every day. The robot I spend most of my time with is the NAO robot from Softbank Robotics.

Amazing Moment #1: A Child in a hospital pediatric ward struggling with muscular dystrophy. This child refused to leave his wheel chair for weeks. But once having interacted with NAO and having been invited by NAO to get out of his wheel chair to sit with NAO on the floor and have his picture taken with NAO – he did just that! A stunningly powerful moment.

Amazing Moment #2: A child with autism, unfocused and erratic was introduced and engaged with NAO. Calm, focus, joy and delight resulted. Because NAO is available in his public library he now visits once week and is studiously progressing in learning about how to program NAO and will soon test his work out at the library. Transformative.

Amazing Moment #3: An eight-year-old, via his parents, contacted me and wanted to share the teaching applications he had developed for his school. It was some of the best quality work I had seen. Amazing yes, at eight years old!

Amazing Moment #4: I was with NAO when he walked out on a stage in front of 7,000 people. Yes, seven-thousand and delivered a show stopping performance. I was very jealous not because NAO was the star but because there was no nervousness, no hesitation, no stage fright on NAO’s part. I seem to recall that he looked at me and conveyed…” Come on we can do this!” Amazing!

Amazing Moment #5: While visiting a Skilled Nursing Facility for the elderly. NAO was used to play a few games and lead a group exercise session. The rejuvenated animation of the elders was overly evident. The proof was that when the session was over, they clamored to want to know when NAO was returning, and could they sit and engage with him (I say him… but who knows…) for a while longer! Hold his hand and take a walk with him. Exciting moments in an otherwise drearily routine day.

The point is, putting aside all the talk and the arguments about robots and what our robot future will be like, we can lose sight that when you are in the real world amazingly wonderful things are happening.

There is a reason that NAO remains the most popular humanoid robot. Above are just a few examples of why.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory for ChartaCloud |ROBOTTECA See: www.robotteca.com and https://robotteca.blogspot.com/ for more information and articles.

5 Real Life Examples of How A Robot Enhances Lives

 There is a lot of discussion and debate about how robots are job threatening or cannot replace what people do. While this remains a bona-fide subject for on-going discussion, the fact is that my real-world experience is that there are significant enhancements that the NAO robot brings to the lives of many. Granted, the NAO robot which is a product of SoftBank Robotics, is a passion of mine, none-the-less, I feel compelled to leap into this discussion with real life examples of how we are better off with NAO. How NAO is making a real-world difference and a true contribution to what we do and how we live.

Let’s look at five examples:

NAO is clinically proven to reduce pain and anxiety in children facing hospital based medical procedures. Child Life Specialist are utilizing NAO in hospitals across North America as an assisted care giver, helping in the treatment and care of children. I know that the children, their caregivers and their parents are quite pleased and excited with the presence of NAO and the attendant reduction in pain and anxiety in children. This is a very good thing.

NAO is at the center of robot-mediated behavior intervention therapies for children on the autism spectrum. One only needs to see and experience the engagement, excitement and progress of these autistic children once engaged with NAO. Therapists and families gain a clear sense that NAO not only works but helps significantly. Hundreds of NAO’s work every day alongside teachers and therapists in autism therapies. It is good to see a happy and engaged autistic child.

NAO is at work in over 200 skilled nursing facilities for eldercare. NAO leads exercises sessions, leads games, leads dances, engages in cognitive dialogues and keeps elders informed. Not only is life more exciting for eldercare residents with NAO but I often see the impact upon children wanting to more often visit their aging grandparents ‘because the robot is there!’. Spend a moment in such a facility with NAO and you would see how the ‘day in the life’’ of an isolated resident becomes more engaging and yes, even transformative. Elderly residents and their caregivers love what NAO brings to their lives.

NAO is in hundreds of classrooms working with teachers and children teaching a full curriculum of lessons in math, science, technology, engineering and arts. NAO provides an engaging and exciting environment that draws the attention of children to learning in a manner more consistent with their experience and expectations in their digital worlds. Teachers enjoy the energy and magnetism NAO creates when learning, a magnetism that excites children about giving their attention to learning new things and re-enforcing previous lessons.

Lastly, it should not go unstated that there are of course many researchers, engineers and developers that benefit from their work in creating and building NAO robots and NAO applications.

So, there we have it. Five true life examples of how a robot enhances the lives of people.

The world is a better place with a NAO robot.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory of ChartaCloud ROBOTTECA.com

Robots Conquering the Frontiers of autism and Technology

The number of children impacted by autism continues to grow. This means a life time of challenges as these children strive to become independent and self-supporting adults. Early intervention can have a significant positive impact on the shape and richness of their future. Having resources that helps parents and teachers as well, cope with the very real challenges and burdens that they jointly face can also be a contributor to a family, home and learning environment that is more calm, nurturing and progressive.

At ChartaCloud | ROBOTTECA we are committed to our passion of breaking through to the new and ever-expanding potential that the new frontiers of technology offer in autism breakthroughs - in research, clinical studies and in robot-mediated behavior intervention therapies.

To advance this initiative we organized and hosted the first Interdisciplinary Workshop for Robot-mediated Behavior Intervention and brought together leading researchers and clinicians to share their ‘state-of-the-art’ findings and progress in applied robot based technology for autism therapies.

You can see recordings of this workshop at www.rmbiworkshop.com.

BOTTOM LINE WORKSHOP FINDING: The use of a robot creates communication breakthroughs and lasting positive impact upon and for children with autism.

There are two proven, leading options for robot mediated behavior interventions:

·        The NAO robot from SoftBank Robotics

·        The Milo robot from RoboKind

Using the NAO Robot offers multiple pathway resources in support of this discipline. With the NAO robot you can:

1.      Create your own custom robot behaviors for child unique intervention sessions.

2.      Utilize the leading resource library of pre-programmed intervention robot behaviors.

The NAO Robot is a proven performer in autism. NAO is engaging and tireless in its interactions, and creates an immediate sense of enthusiasm, connectivity, responsiveness and joy.

The Milo Robot is a robot specifically designed for autism engagement therapies. Milo with its unique ‘facial expression’ technology allows Milo to model facial emotions. Milo can speak, smile, laugh and walk. Milo creates immediate engagement allowing the effective delivery of a comprehensive, evidence-based social curriculum. In fact, students with ASD engage with Milo at rates as high as 90% compared with only 3% engagement with humans.

Working continuously with the world’s autism technology leaders in robotics we provide a comprehensive and ever-evolving ‘ecology of behaviors’ that you can draw upon. With these behaviors use of these robots by non-technical users is easily accomplished which means that the robot can also be used in conventional classroom settings and do double duty as the platform for STEM educational curricula.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board for ChartaCloud | ROBOTTECA

Autistic Persons: the “Star-gate” Guides to Artificial Intelligence

 It is increasingly being recognized that many individuals on the spectrum have significant potential and value as computer code developers, as programmers. Factually, several major technology companies have established focused corporate programs to embrace and develop the potential of this unique human resource. It is becoming ever more understood that autistic persons are another type of true person – an autistic person, and as such in many instances they possess extraordinary insight and focus. I believe that the present, conventional view of an autistic individual as simply a great programmer is about to change and change dramatically. Why?

There are a very few things if any, in today’s world of technology that garners more attention than the advance and the future of artificial intelligence (AI) ‘systems’. From Stephan Hawking to Elon Musk to Bill Gates it seems, everyone has an opinion about its dangers and benefits to mankind. My view is that AI does represent a potential path forward for the salvation of a human race that seems to have missed the opportunity to save “its” planet or have moved soon enough and fast enough to prepare an escape to populate another planet in our solar system. AI represents another opportunity. The merits of differing views are a debate for another day. The march towards AI will continue. It is here that autistic individuals with their unique facilities will soon be found to be our “Star-gate guides”.

One of the most intense sectors of focus is on the integration and embedding of AI in the development of humanoid robots. Let’s look at this for a moment. Here, we are trying to get these robots to ‘learn’ how to interface with humans, how to recognize the emotional state of a human, how to understand its own environment - in sum, embody a ‘cognitive capacity’. IBM offers the following attributes to help define cognitive embodiment: personalization, liveness, agency, and presence. In essence, we are trying to overcome and develop in robots much of the very same challenges autistic individuals face every day. I think you see my point…who better to advance AI than individuals with practiced insights in how to actually address these exact challenges.

I believe that we will see technology prone autistic individuals leap to the next level one that is above basic computer programming by being our guides in the emerging world of robots and AI. Who better to teach than an experienced individual? My faith in humanity’s destiny is that we have been given in some autistic persons the knowledge and insights to help us get it right.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board for ChartaCloud ROBOTTECA More can be seen about Mike on LinkedIN and about ROBOTTECA at www.robotteca.com

Ten Discoveries by a Technologist Learning About autism

I became engaged with the intersection of autism and technology by way of humanoid robots. I wanted to answer two questions about what is emerging as ‘robot-mediated behavior intervention’ for autism. Does it work? Does it have a meaningful and lasting impact? In attempting to answer these questions I thought it would be a good starting point to bring together the leading researchers and clinicians to share their findings and insights. To that end, I set out to host a workshop on these very questions. The resulting participation was world class, and the amount of interest in viewing this workshop ‘live’ by individuals from around the world was amazing. The full workshop can be viewed at www.rmbiworkshop.com.

In this workshop we also focused on two of the leading robots already being used in almost 400 robot mediated-behavior situations. The world class level of researchers, and their research programs and clinical studies are making significant contributions to the understanding this discipline.

What have I learned thus far? Candidly, this discovery exercise has opened many unexpected dimensions for further considerations.

1. It seems that we are on the cusp of understanding that those with autism should not be classed as disadvantaged. They are by definition, autistic people, and should be seen and understood as such and not somehow categorized into a group that is labeled as disadvantaged.
2. Autism is a lifelong issue and is not only ‘a child’ focused matter.
3. You cannot paint every autistic child as the same, or similar as the next. Just as each person cannot be classified as ‘common’ they too are each unique – just as every person is unique.
4. That there is an observable and joyful outcome for children who have the opportunity to engage with a non-threatening, ‘tirelessly responsive’ robot. The children like robots. It helps them become engaged, happy and responsive.
5. The positive impacts sustain themselves even once the robot mediated behavior ceases.
6. The robots serve as a powerful mediation element that can help calm those ‘frustration and rage’ moments – especially in school class rooms.
7. Fundamental learning is advanced.
8. We can learn and measure by observing the child’s interactions and actually measure a child’s positive engagement progress.
9. Robots can be used by non-technicians in a therapeutic manner.
10. Robots can help ‘unlock’ children and the robots will continuously improve as a behavior mediation platform.

So, I am encouraged about what I have discovered thus far and remain committed that my passion for advancing robot based technology in autism is well founded.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board for ChartaCloud | Robotteca. More can be seen at www.robotteca.com

Answering the Most Frequently Asked Question: What does this robot do? Top ten Uses.

As I travel the country with our fleet of robots the most frequently asked question about any of the robots is always what does it do? What would I use it for? This question is asked at every robot encounter and about every robot we provide. So, for this writing I will answer that question about/for the NAO Robot from SoftBank Robotics. I will address other robots in later writings. More than 10,000 NAO robots are in use in over 50 countries. So that fact alone should be an indication of the robustness of NAO’s versatility, utility and functionality.

But first let’s address a few foundational issues that surround these questions. Underlying the posited questions is usually the feeling that robots are ‘job stealers’ and that they are a threat. What most are really asking is the question: ‘Will it eventually take my job away?” Well the fact is that in certain job classes that may very well be true. However, the job creation that I see being generated in the robot sector and what I observe in the scope of unfilled jobs ‘going calling’…employment opportunities abound. Just this week a major retailer was stuffing doors in our neighborhood with ‘We Have Jobs Open” flyers! While this is a good question, without robots in our industrial future, our economy will falter severely and that will be worse for jobs. My assessment is robots are a good thing.

This next issue I have found to be very, very interesting. Robots without a ‘human like face’ don’t seem to generate the angst that robots with a ‘head and face’ do. No one objects to the ‘robot’ that washes their dishes or their clothes. Or, the oven that cooks their food or makes their toast or their morning cup of coffee or caries them like an elevator does in a building. Well those are ‘machines’ well not really they are a class of robots, I think. It is when we add a ‘face’ and seeming intelligence for ‘conversation’ that things get edgy. So, when you can talk to your dish washer are you concerned that one day it will say “I am not working today!”? Or, “You need to do a better job scraping the residue from the dinner plates!” Upon reflection, I clearly remember the angst that surrounded microwave ovens when they arrived on the scene. “How does it do that?!” “Are we all going to die of radiation poising?” Try and find a home today without a microwave. The same adoption curve will happen for in home social robots. I therefore think it is the ‘head and face’ motif that makes us think that the robot differently and that it may have a sinister purpose of its own making.

Let us now turn to the actual question at hand and answer the “So what is it used for?” question.

Here are my top ten uses of the NAO Robot:

1.       HOSPITALS: as Pediatric Medical Assistants clinically proven to reduce pain and fear in children that face medical procedures.

2.       AUTISM Therapies: as mediated behavior intervention vehicles that help unlock the social communications capacities of children on the autism spectrum.

3.       SCHOOLS: as a STEM Robotics learning platform

4.       SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITIES: as social assistants and exercise therapy leaders

5.       LIBRARIES: as a ‘makerspace’ resource for community education and robot access

6.       RETAIL: as an art expert in an art gallery showroom

7.       SUPRMARKETS: as product educators

8.       BANKS: as customer service agents

9.       TRADESHOWS: as in-booth sales agents

1.   ENTERTAINMENT: as performers in stage and dance performances

I think the above gives a pretty good answer to the question and presents a view of the ever-growing utility of robots of the ‘social/collaborative’ class such as a NAO. In some of the above cases such as in pediatric medical care and autism the robot actually does what it does better, and delivers a better impact than humans. Robots are rising for sure.