A proposal of a virtual robotic assistant and a rule-based expert system to carry out therapeutic exercises with children with Dyslalia

The Dyslalia is considered one of the most common communication disorders that present children with and without disabilities. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) claims that 5 percent of U.S. children ages 3-17 have a speech disorder that lasted for a week or longer during the past 12 months. This situation is very similar in other countries of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. For these reasons, in this paper, we present a proposal of a virtual robotic assistant aimed at providing therapy exercises for children with Dyslalia. The virtual assistant uses a rule-based expert system that determines the best alternatives of exercises that will be carried out with a child in the phonetic area. With the aim of developing the physical version of the virtual assistant, we performed a study with 33 students enrolled in the last year of the career of initial education, early stimulation, and precocious intervention (in Cuenca, Ecuador). The participants validated our proposal through a survey, and the achieved results are encouraging.