Maker Faire Rome 2025
Pet robots in autism therapy for children
The use of social robots in autism therapies has shown the potential to increase engagement with pediatric patients. This project aims at using a pet robot, in particular a Loona Petbot, to increase the level of interaction between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the therapists. The experimental setup consists of a robot placed in front of the patient and remotely controlled by a human therapist. We have developed a methodology that allows the child’s proximity to the robot to be measured quantitatively using Computer Vision.
https://dbloisi.github.io/
Additional Project Photos




Maker
Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma UNINT
Domenico D. Bloisi is associate professor for AI at UNINT University Rome. Since 2016, he is member of the SPQR Team participating in world robot soccer competitions with NAO robots. Michele Brienza is student for the National Phd programme in Artificial Intelligence. Camilla Fruet and Luca Paulon are students at UNINT University Rome. Marco Romano is associate professor for Human Robot Interaction at UNINT University Rome. Alessandro Frolli is associate professor for Psychology at UNINT University Rome.



