The robot in the ASD clinic. Interests and future issues

Decades have passed since the creation of Unimate, the first industrial robot installed in 1961 on a General Motors production line. Since then, robots have been used in a wide variety of fields, from the military and the automotive industry to education and medicine. Robotics, and more particularly humanoid robotics, is a world that arouses both enthusiasm and apprehension, both on the part of researchers and technicians working in the field, and on the part of users who have already experienced interaction with a machine.

This article is part of the work carried out by the Institut pour l'Etude des Relations Homme-Robots (IERHR), an association founded in 2013 by Serge Tisseron and Frédéric Tordo, bringing together several researchers interested in the issue of robotics, and with the main aim of studying the relationships that humans have with technological tools, in different uses and contexts, in order to provide professionals and the general public with an expert's view of the various questions that people may ask themselves on this subject, as well as of the ethical issues that these technological innovations raise.

An increasingly studied field, robotics is likely to lead to more and more developments, in terms of design and uses, in engineering as well as in the economic and industrial sectors. Today, social robotics seems to be the next societal evolution that will change our relationship with technology. From the clinical psychologist's point of view, it is essential to consider what this technological advance could bring in terms of therapy. As society evolves in parallel with the development of new technologies and digital tools, clinical practice and theoretical research must examine the contributions and limits of these technologies, and even influence their development in order to control their future. Given that video games have already emerged as a formidable medium for therapeutic mediation, thanks in particular to the different forms of relationship that children can maintain with their digital avatars, the study of the patient/robot/therapist relationship seems to us to be a crucial issue, particularly in the field of autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

This article will focus mainly on describing the different interests that robots can have in the ASD clinic, starting with a theoretical review of what psychologists can observe about social robots, and more particularly about the relationship that humans can (or will be able to) maintain with these machines. The aim is to encourage the various professionals working with robots (engineers, roboticists, etc.) to pool their practices with psychologists, in order to enhance the benefits that these machines can bring in a therapeutic context.