Assessment of a Robotic Assistant for Supporting Homework Activities of Children With ADHD

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT) support various processes in many scenarios of modern life such as e-health and psychological treatments. This article presents the design, development, implementation, and assessment of a Robotic Assistant (RA), named “Atent@”, as a support tool in the homework activities of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Interacting with the children the RA helps them correct their bad habits and misbehavior caused by the disorder. Its features and functionalities were designed by therapists, implementing AI algorithms to process information and make decisions in real-time to help children to be focused on their homework. This RA interacts with smart objects deployed at home, which are associated with the activity under observation (desk and chair). This solution allows therapists to receive more accurate information about the homework sessions inside the home. At the same time, remote interaction with the child is made possible (through the RA) to provide new instructions and support him/her along with the sessions. This RA is a significant evolution of an earlier version. All the improvements brought to the project by the modifications in technical and qualitative features are explained. Furthermore, the experiment and its results are presented to illustrate the clinical potential. This project shows that the RA can not only make observations with a high degree of precision like an expert (teacher/therapist) but also positively influences the homework performance of children with and without ADHD.