Jawi alphabot: A jawi teaching robot for children with autism

The children who have disability in their social interaction and communication are categorized as children with autism. Often autistic children are facing challenges in independent living causing many concerns toward teaching and learning for the autistic children. As a result, therapists and educators of autistic children are facing distress when teaching the autistic children as it is harder to retain their attention during the learning process. Hence, there are some researchers suggest robotic approach as clinical tool to assist therapist especially teachers in teaching session with autistic children. Therefore, this research is focusing on developing a robot to teach the basic Jawi modules to the autistic children. The objective of this paper is twofold, presenting: (1) the ways Jawi Alphabot is programmed to perform teaching, and 2) the attentive assessment results that shows the effectiveness of robotics intervention in learning Jawi among the autistics. Besides, a module for the teacher and the children is also available as a guideline for them to implement this robotic learning process. During the experimental design testing, the autistic children are divided into two groups (i.e. control group and experimental group) and were given different intervention in learning Jawi. The intervention in learning Jawi are: 1) traditional method and 2) robotics intervention method. The results are discussed with evidences that highlights how robotics intervention could alleviate attentiveness in learning among the autistic children. � 2019, World Academy of Research in Science and Engineering. All rights reserved.