If this guys highly creepy looks are any indication, he’ll be a lot like Casper the friendly ghost, in that he’ll scare the crap out of kids and later befriend them. KASPAR (Kinesics and Synchronization in Personal Assistant Robotics) is a child sized robot from Adaptive Systems Research Group from the Universty of Hertfordshire. This group also is a part of RobotCub.

Creepy KASPAR may be, but he has a noble purpose. KASPAR will be used to study children with autism. Which explains his special skin called Roboskin.

Children with autism have problems with touch, often with either touching or being touched, said Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn. The idea is to put skin on the robot as touch is a very important part of social development and communication and the tactile sensors will allow the robot to detect different types of touch and it can then encourage or discourage different approaches.

Video below.

[Kaspar]

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Medical. Be sure to subscribe to the Botropolis.com feed because it is really, really awesome. Have something you want to share? Please let us know.

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