Mel

Description
Mel is one of the earliest robots used in the AURORA project.  The AuRoRA Project studies if and how robots can become a "toy" that might serve an educational or therapeutic role for children with autism. The project is supported by the University of Hertfordshire.

Mel is a small mobile robot with 8 infrared sensors positioned around its body and 1 positional heat sensor mounted at the front. Its dimensions are 38cm by 30cm by 21 cm. It is very robust and relatively lightweight. It closely resembles a lunchbox on wheels.

A speech box was added to the robot to enable it to ‘speak’ certain phrases such as such as 'I can't see you'. These phrases could be triggered by the robot's own state and/or the way children interacted with it.

The Science Bit
Werry et al (2001) reported on trials involving children with autism between 8 and 12 years of age. The early trials completed with Mel intended to gauge the level of interaction to be expected from the children and to provide a baseline for further development work. The first positive result was that the children were not afraid to interact and approach the robot. Further results showed that when pairs of two children were playing with the robot interesting interaction structures were observed, such as instruction, cooperation,  possibly learning by imitation, and others. The paper ultimately concludes that interaction levels were encouraging and that more trials were warranted.

It seems that 'Mel' was only ever developed as a lab robot for research trials and is not available on the commercial market.