Using the power of memes: The Pepper Robot as a communicative facilitator for autistic children (cAESAR2023 workshop)

An example of mocking interaction that has produced a lot of hilarity and has been revived during several meetings is related to the understanding by the children that pronounce at the beginning of the question the keywords have you ever been in... allowed access to the standard answer: no, but I would like to visit the whole world, even though the question was not completed with a real location, prompting participants to ask if Pepper had ever visited the Moon, heaven or the land of the stupidity. As per the goal of stimulating the social interaction between the participants, the technical difficulties that emerged during this phase encouraged the children's curiosity about the robot, encouraging collective discussion about how Pepper works and brainstorming suggestions for improvements to make it a more enjoyable conversation partner. On the other hand, the analysis of these phases, despite not having produced satisfactory therapeutic results, is extremely interesting to conduct an evaluation of interactions aimed at improving the dialogue system, pointing out that, even before technical problems, communication with the robot is deficient because it is not fluent in the slang used by children, compromising its position as a mediator because it is unable to act as an interpreter between children and specialized adults working in the laboratory.