"In this talk, we will discuss how robot-mediated communication would contribute to therapeutic practices for children with developmental disorders, especially autism, a spectrum of developmental disorders in communication. Autistic children, in general, have difficulties in understanding other's mental states, such as attention, emotion, intention, and belief. We developed a robot that can express only attention and emotion, so that autistic children could intuitively read its mental states. The robot, being tele-controlled by an operator (researcher or therapist), performed and observed the interaction with autistic children in their daily therapeutic environment. The longitudinal interactions showed that the minimally designed robot would be an useful tool for therapeutic interventions."

Hideki Kozima is a professor of School of Project Design, Miyagi University (Miyagi, Japan). He has received his Ph.D. in computer science and information mathematics from the University of Electro-Communication (Tokyo, Japan) in 1994. From 1994 to 2008, he was Senior Research Scientist at Naotional Institute of Information and Communications Technology (Kobe and Kyoto, Japan). From 2008, he has been with Miyagi University, working on research and education on interactive robots, human-robot interaction, cognitive science of human communication, and autism therapy.