The Difficulties and Complications of Children When Going to a Zoo and Should Interact with the Colors of the Information in It: An Approach Based on the Use of a Humanoid NAO Robot in an Application for “Smart Cities”

One of the decisive aspects in Smart Cities is to provide inclusive spaces, for those who suffer from a condition that limits their interaction with the environment, but in several cases that information is only designed for average people. Zoos visual information is an example of well-designed signals for providing data associated with the species in the exhibition, but all this information is colorful and with different signals, such as the colors of the species, their habitat including their food and geographical distribution, which it means that is not the must inclusive information for people that cannot perceive colors or that has some kind of condition that difficulties metal associations. Thus, any child who has a condition associated with the identification of colors, or certain mental condition will have difficulties to understand the zoo signals. Down syndrome is the most frequent cause of mental disability, presenting similar difficulties among people who suffer from it; a short-term memory capacity, exhausting attention and language delay are some of its most frequent characteristics. In Mexico, only 3% of children with Down Syndrome receive education. However, there are several technological alternatives that has been implemented around the world, and the use of robots is gradually becoming a good alternative for assisting and performing therapy to people that suffers this disability. NAO is an Aldebaran humanoid robot with several sensors, actuators and tools, that can be programmed with python, which has helped to popularize this friendly robot in the assisting of people. In this paper, we propose the use of a humanoid robot for future applications in therapy for children with Down Syndrome. To this purpose, we propose how to improve their ability to work with colors and shapes in a group of children with Down Syndrome.