Children with autism spectrum disorder can have a confusing time expressing their emotions and can be extremely sensitive to sound, sight, and touch. That sometimes restricts their participation in everyday activities, leaving them socially isolated. Occupational therapists can help them cope better, but the time they’re able to invest is limited and the sessions tend to be expensive.
 
Roboticist Ayanna Howard, an IEEE senior member, has been using interactive androids to guide children with autism on ways to socially and emotionally engage with others—as a supplement to therapy. Howard is chair of the School of Interactive Computing and director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab at Georgia Tech. She served found Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech VentureLab startup that is working on AI and robotics technologies to engage children with special needs. Last year Forbes named Howard, Zyrobotics’ chief technology officer, one of the Top 50 U.S. Women in Tech.
 
In a current study, Howard and other researchers explored how robots might help children navigate sensory experiences. The experiment involved 18 participants between the ages of 4 and 12; five had autism, and the rest were meeting typical developmental milestones. Two humanoid robots were developed to express boredom, excitement, nervousness, and 17 other emotional states. As children explored stations set up for hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, the robots modeled what the socially acceptable responses should be.
 
“If a child’s expression is one of happiness or joy, the robot will have a corresponding reply of encouragement,” Howard says. “If there are aspects of frustration or sadness, the robot will supply input to try again.” The study proposed that many children with autism exhibit stronger levels of engagement when the robots interact with them at such sensory stations.
 
It is one of many robotics projects Howard has tackled. She has created robots for researching glaciers, and she is working on assistive robots for the home, as well as an exoskeleton that can help children who have motor disabilities.
 
 Howard spoke about her work during the Ethics in AI: Impacts of (Anti?) Social Robotics panel session held in May at the IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit in San Diego. You can watch the session on IEEE.tv.
 
In this interview with The Institute, Howard talks about how she got engaged with assistive technologies, the need for a more diverse workforce, and ways IEEE has benefited her career.
 
FOCUS ON ACCESSIBILITY
Howard was inspired to work on technology that can improve accessibility in 2008 while teaching high school students at a summer camp devoted to science, technology, engineering, and math.
 
“A young lady with a visual impairment attended camp. The robot development tools being used at the camcampp weren’t accessible to her,” Howard says. “As an engineer, I want to fix hassles when I see them, so we ended up designing tools to enable access to programming tools that could be used in STEM education.
 
“That was my starting motivation, and this theme of accessibility has widened to become a main focus of my research. One of the things about this world of accessibility is that when you start communicating with kids and parents, you learn another world out there of assistive technologies and how robotics can be used for good in education as well as therapy.”
 
DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT
The Institute asked Howard why it’s crucial to have a more diverse STEM workforce and what could be done to enhance the number of women and others from underrepresented groups.
 
“The makeup of the current engineering workforce isn’t necessarily representative of the world, which is made up of different races, cultures, ages, disabilities, and socio-economic backgrounds,” Howard says. “We’re creating goods used by people around the globe, so we have to ensure they’re being manufactured for a diverse population. As IEEE members, we also need to indulge with people who aren’t engineers, and we don’t do that enough.”
 
Educational institutions are doing a better job of increasing diversity in areas such as gender, she says, adding that more work is necessary because the enrollment numbers still aren’t representative of the population and the gains don’t necessarily carry through after graduation.
 
 “There has been an increase in the number of underrepresented minorities and females going into engineering and computer science,” she says, “but data has shown that their numbers are not sustained in the workforce.”
 
ROLE MODEL
Because there are more underrepresented groups on today’s college campuses that can form a community, the lack of engineering role models—although a care on campuses—is more overwhelming for preuniversity students, Howard says.
 
 “Depending on where you go to school, you may not know what an engineer does or even consider engineering as an choice,” she says, “so there’s still a big disconnect there.”
 
Howard has been active for many years in math- and science-mentoring programs for at-risk high school girls. She tells them to find what they’re passionate about and combine it with math and science to create something. She also advises them not to let individuals tell them that they can’t.
 
Howard’s father is an engineer. She says he never encouraged or discouraged her to become one, but when she broke something, he would show her how to fix it and talk her through the process. Along the way, he taught her a logical way of thinking she says all engineers have.
 
“When I would try to explain something, he would quiz me and tell me to ‘think more logically,’” she says.
 
Howard attained a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Brown University, in Providence, R.I., then she received both a master’s and doctorate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. Before joining the faculty of Georgia Tech in 2005, she worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology for more than a decade as a senior robotics researcher and deputy manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist.
 
ACTIVE VOLUNTEER
Howard’s father was also an IEEE member, but that’s not why she joined the company. She says she signed up when she was a student because, “that was something that you just did. Plus, my student membership fee was sponsored.”
 
She kept the registration as a grad student because of the discounted rates members receive on conferences.
 
Those conferences have had an impact on her career. “They allow you to understand what the state of the art is,” she says. “Back then you obtained a printed conference proceeding and reading through it was brutal, but by attending it in person, you got a 15-minute snippet about the research.”
 
Howard is an active volunteer with the IEEE Robotics and Automation and the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics societies, holding many positions and serving on several committees.
 
“I value IEEE for its community,” she says. “One of the nice things about IEEE is that it’s international.”



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com