  This paper reviews the use of socially interactive robots to assist in the
therapy of children with autism. The extent to which the robots were successful
in helping the children in their social, emotional, and communication deficits
was investigated. Child-robot interactions were scrutinized with respect to the
different target behaviors that are to be elicited from a child during therapy.
These behaviors were thoroughly examined with respect to a childs development
needs. Most importantly, experimental data from the surveyed works were
extracted and analyzed in terms of the target behaviors and how each robot was
used during a therapy session to achieve these behaviors. The study concludes
by categorizing the different therapeutic roles that these robots were observed
to play, and highlights the important design features that enable them to
achieve high levels of effectiveness in autism therapy.
