CUHK Prof Catherine So was invited to introduce her award-winning programme - Robot for Autism Intervention (RABI) at the Brown Bag Seminar in YCCECE on 30 January, 2024. During which she demonstrated the magic RABI which has performed in enhancing children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on their social and behavioral skills.

The programmability of the social robots allows them to be predictable and repeatable, which makes the entire teaching process well-structured and provides a good learning environment. Furthermore, the social robots can teach with patience with the autistic children. They can repeat again and again without being affected by personal emotions, which greatly reduces the anxiety of autistic children and significantly enhances their learning motivation. She also show-cased their multi-level curriculum which targets a wide range of skills from self-care to conversation, and to vocational skills. Through deploying social robots, the RABI curriculum reduces autism severity and increases social and behavioral functioning.  

Moving with the times, the team also is working hard in bringing RABI to the next level - AI-RABI and developing AutiBot Pro for assessment, using AI to provide initial screening for children's ability in different domains, and provide individualized training tailor-made for each child according to their severity. Next step of Prof So's project is to bring RABI into households with child with autism, allowing children to continue their training with RABI at home. Through linking up families, schools, community and government, an ecosystem with all-round support can be established to provide the optimal support and assistance for individuals with ASD.