Newton resident Bijan Bowen has harnessed the power of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create the R1 Social Robot, an interactive program that families are now using to help their autistic children improve their socialization abilities.
His initial goal with the robot was as an educational item that teachers could use to introduce AI to students, but he soon received feedback from parents saying it was good for their neurodivergent children.
“It can help children get social experience with something that won’t get impatient when they go on tangents,” said Bowen.
Autistic children often struggle with being able to maintain a conversation and can be hyper-fixated on a few topics, and being able to practice with a robot can be useful.
“A lot of the social anxiety isn’t there when you’re talking to the robot. There’s no eye contact,” Bowen added.
Parents can set the device to have a particular personality. One parent set it up to be “a kind, friendly, positive, supportive boy named Eli, who loves dinosaurs but also gives advice on how to make friends and hold conversations on other subjects,” Bowen said, to help his autistic son who loves dinosaurs.
The device has facial expressions and uses Microsoft Azure Speech, which has a large variety of voices to choose from.
Bowen builds the robots in his Newton home, using a 3D Printer. This allows him to offer a much less expensive product than competitors who have pricey overhead. On the other hand, as a one-man operation, he’s very busy.
“If you work 9-to-5, you can come home and relax. I can’t do that,” he said. “I love it! You have to be wired for it, but I love it, and spending 18 or 19 hours a day on it isn’t a problem for me.”
He became interested in edtech when studying computer science at the UMass Boston, where he realized that the education sector can have a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace of technological advances.
But this isn’t Bowen’s first experience with assistive technology: he created a communication app for non-verbal people when he was in high school. He attended Minuteman Vocational Technical High School in Lexington, which meant getting regular hands-on experience in the computer shop. He praised his experience at a tech high school.
“If you had a lot of specialized interests like I did, it provided a good launch pad before even going to college,” he said, adding that many of his classmates in the computer program are now making high salaries as software developers. “Everyone who went to Minuteman found their people.”
Bowen’s current robot is intended for parents or teachers to build together with children to learn more about how computers work, but he’s planning on releasing an additional one that requires less assembly. The next model will also be able to be connected with any AI the user wants, not just ChatGPT.
The software, which runs on the Unity game development engine, is free to download for personal use, meaning users can edit it if they want.
One of the robots will be on display, along with many other robots, on Sept. 28 at the 7th Annual Robot Block Party in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood, which is free and open to the public.
Below is a video presentation of the R1 Social Robot.