Vinícius Silva, PhD student in Electronic and Computer Engineering, was distinguished with the “Best Abstract Award” in the scope of the 4th Doctoral Congress in Engineering at the Symposium of Electronic and Computer Engineering, which took place on 28 and 29 June, in Porto.

This prize was awarded in the context of the work entitled “A supervised autonomous approach for robot intervention with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”, which aims to promote social-emotional interaction of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using a hybrid approach (robot + tangible interface). The system adapts the behaviour of a humanoid robot, in a supervised way, according to the non-verbal behaviours of a child, enabling a more natural interaction. The system validation is done through a triadic interaction (child, researcher and robot), being the robot the object of shared attention.

This work resulted from the collaboration between researchers from the School of Engineering of UMinho (Filomena Soares and João Sena Esteves).