DE-ENIGMA

Autism affects around 5 million children in Europe, particularly their communication and interaction skills, including difficulties recognising and expressing emotions. Conventionally, foundational skills like emotion recognition are taught face-to-face with an adult; the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project DE-ENIGMA developed a less socially demanding and more entertaining alternative using artificial intelligence.

DE-ENIGMA developed artificial intelligence for a commercial robot (Robokind's Zeno), used for an emotion-recognition and emotion-expression teaching programme with school-aged autistic children, combining technology, a cartoon-like robot character and peer socialising. Across several design phases, Zeno was made progressively 'smarter', processing children's motions, vocalisations and facial expressions to adaptively and autonomously present emotion activities and engage in feedback, support and play. The project was coordinated by the University of Twente, with partners including Imperial College London, University of Passau, the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, University College London, the Serbian Society of Autism, Autism Europe, IDMIND and the University of Augsburg.