You hear about robots helping fight the wars around the world every day with drones and bomb defusing robots, but there’s another fight that robots are taking on that you may not know about.

With one in every 110 children in the U.S. being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), it seems like everyone today is touched by autism.  The jury is still out on what is creating this worldwide epidemic, but robots are increasingly being used for therapy, and more recently as a means to diagnose ASD.

Children with autism have problems with social interaction. Research is showing that autistic children find it easier to interact with robots than with humans because, unlike people, robots are predictable. Autistic children find it difficult to cope in situations that are not predictable.

Early detection is important if children are to achieve their full potential. ASD is suspected when a child’s development departs from the typical patterns. According to the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), possible indicators of autism include:

• No babbling, pointing, or meaningful gestures by 1 year of age;
• No one-word communications by 16 months;
• No two-word phrases by 2 years;
• Loss of language or social skills;
• Poor eye contact;
• Inability to play appropriately with toys;
• Unusual attachment to one particular toy or object;
• No smiling; and
• Apparent lack of response to sounds or voices and name being called.

Click on the pictures below to learn about some of the robots being used and experimented with as tools for therapy and diagnosis for autism.

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