Keepon The Therapist (And More Vids, Of Course)
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 15 of February , 2008 at 5:30 am
I’m gonna try real hard to pretend that this isn’t a Keepon videospam post (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and talk a little bit about what everyone’s favorite little dancin’ squishbot is actually designed to do, since he’s more than just a pretty face. Really, he is. Keepon was created to exchange emotions with, and provide attention to, small children in a simple and comprehensive way. Although he’s programmed to track faces and dance autonomously, when working with children, Keepon is generally controlled by a remote operator. He’s capable of two primary actions: “attentive” (Keepon is “looking” at something specific) and “emotive” (rocking back and forth or bobbing up and down). The simplicity of these actions means that Keepon is very, very easy to understand, relate to, and get along with.
Keepon works at a day-care center for children with developmental delays and/or disorders. Despite his simplicity, he seems to be quite effective as an interactive diagnostic tool:
The children showed various actions in relation to Keepon. Sometimes they showed vivid facial expressions that even their parents had not seen before. They also showed prosocial actions like trying to feed Keepon, putting on a cap on its head, and kissing it. As a whole, the observations suggest the following points:
-The children with difficulty in inter-personal communication (especially, those with PDD and autism), were able to approach to Keepon with curiosity and security. This is probably because Keepon seemed to be neither a complex human nor a simple toy.
-Some of the children extended their diadic interaction with Keepon into triadic inter-personal interaction, where they tried to share the pleasure and surprise they found in Keepon with others, like their caregivers and nursing staff.
-Each child showed a different style of interaction that changed over time, which would tell us a “story” of his or her personality and developmental profile, which would not be thoroughly explained by a diagnostic label like “autism”.
Not bad for a little yellow puffball, right? More Keepon vids (the ones you really want to see) after the jump.
Yeah, you’ve seen these here before, but now they have extra super special behind-the-scenes pop-up video goodness, a la VH1:
Thanks to Mandy for the tip!
Category: Medical
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