interaction deficits. Children with autism have restricted repetitive behaviours, activities, and narrow interests.

ASD also makes it hard for them to imitate, pay attention to the same thing at the same time, understand goals,

share feelings, and use language to communicate and play with other people. They are usually in their own world.

To assist these children with autism, there are lots of tries to help them ease their daily activities and learning

sessions. This paper discusses the implementation and impact of technology for autism in education. The paper

review uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review (PRISMA) method with a specific keyword,

which is “autism robot special education technology”. Our results show that technology can create both

enjoyable and challenging learning settings. Most of the technologies are used to assist the learning process.

Hence, special education can use technology to help children with autism, such as robots, video, virtual reality,

interactive environments, games, and others that impact autism education. The review found that a humanoid

and others. Technology also acts as a decision-maker, assistive tool, communication tool and connecting tool,

which has been used broadly in education, including special needs children. Technologies can aid special needs

populations in their daily lives, but some are not usable enough due to price, education level, skill level,

compatibility concerns, etc. There are several types of special needs, and the present study focuses on Autism

Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Children with ASD need the same educational and pedagogical resources as typical

kids in order to improve their living conditions and advance their critical thinking and cognitive development in

This research paper will discuss the implementation of technology for autism in education. It also analyses the

impact of the technology implemented, such as using humanoid robots as assistive tools for autism. The articles

consist of five main sections. Section 2 is on “related works”, which discusses ASD, Learning styles for Autism,

ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder detected at three years old and characterised by social communication

and social interaction deficits. ASD children also have restricted repetitive behaviours, activities, and narrow

interests. Autism can occur in any race, people, or religion worldwide [2], [3]. It is also found that these disorders

appear to affect different ethnic and socioeconomic groups similarly, though boys are nearly five times as likely

There are some limitations of social abilities in ASD, such as imitation, joint attention, goal understanding, affect

sharing, and communicative use of language and play [7]. A study by Alarcon et al. (2021) in his research [1]

found that people with ASD are less likely to imitate a range of tasks, increased imitation in ASD, with others'

behaviours (echopraxia) and words (echolalia) imitated without regard for context or meaning. Several field

studies demonstrate the therapeutic benefits of utilising interactive robots in therapy, including enhanced speech,

disorder, Asperger's disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD), Rett's disorder, and PDD-NOS are the

five different subtypes of ASD [10] [11]. Nevertheless, Rett's Disorder is not classified as a type of ASD, as

stated by [12]. Fig. 1 below shows the types of ASD. Besides that, there are also levels of ASD, and each level

indicates the severity of ASD. Research done by Masi et al. (2017) [13] and Pietrangelo (2020) [12] summarised

the severity levels according to social communication and restricted, repetitive behaviour of ASD. Meanwhile,

a study by [14] summarises the characteristics of each autism level as shown in Table 1. Asperger's syndrome is

classified under Level 1, PDD-NOS is categorised under Level 2, and Autistic Disorder and CDD are placed in

Level 3. These levels are determined by an individual's strengths and limitations in communication, adaptability

to change, exploration of broader interests, and daily life management [15], [16]. Mohd et al. (2019) mentioned

in their research [17] that children with autism face difficulties in processing information, such as perceiving,

Learning style is how individuals process information, behave towards the situation and feel while learning. It

is based on individual preferences when participating in the learning cycle and influences their personality, jobs,

education, and life experiences (Colorosa et al., 2014). For autism, some learning styles have been applied or

suggested to be implemented. Mohd et al. (2020) suggest combining learning with gaming to attract autistic

children to their learning process, which can increase their concentration in learning [19]. Usually, autistic

children love to have visual support for their learning sessions. However, according to Friedlander, they also

ASD children appear to be more comfortable interacting with robots than humans. In addition to lowering costs,

the primary advantage of employing technology to facilitate treatment is that therapists, schools, and parents

may control the treatment session, thereby ensuring consistency across sessions and enabling a concentration on

a specific issue [44]. Due to the inclusion of social robots in therapy has even observed how the children’s limited

where robots are likely to be influential, such as serving as "stepping stones" for social interactions and the ability

A study by [57] concluded that the robots interacting with autistic people should be less detailed and less visually

complex than humans but still in human form. The reason is that autistic children prefer simple to mechanical

Technology-based educational initiatives have the potential to (i) give students immediate and consistent

feedback; (ii) prioritise student agency in an active learning setting rather than treating them as passive

participants; (iii) dynamically control social expectations that are overly demanding and confusing; (iv) make

intervention group to make eye contact with their teachers. According to the findings, these children considered

social robots more engaging than human teachers. However, merely engaging well with social robots may not

result in improved learning results. Meanwhile, [60] found providing some special support beneficial, either

synchronised or not during the pandemic. The intervention without non-interaction digital media can still deliver

the function of the special support tools to the ASD children. However, it showed positive results from interaction

In another study by [25] that still uses NAO robots, found that the initial therapeutic sessions have been

encouraging, indicating positive effects on participants’ communication and interaction skills, joint attention,

and cognitive flexibility. In addition, team games with multiple robots strengthened the critical bidirectional link

between the participants. Meanwhile, a study by [1] each child's progress is plodding and depends on their

Finally, a study by [62] also applied NAO as a medium to teach music and play the drum. The characteristics of

imitation and the turn-taking process are considered in this research. The research results show that a physical

robot tutor positively impacts the subject’s performance compared to a virtual avatar tutor. However, a virtual

Ishak et al. found in their research [63]that the measurement of the interaction can be seen from language skills,

eye contact, imitation behaviour, facial expression, and robot movement. The research used the Rero robot and

tested the evaluation of engagement. The results indicated that learning with the robot is better than learning

with the teachers, and they suggested that it is better to introduce the robot to ASD children. The observer should

come from the person they already know. In another study, Wu [33] used emotions in robot heads by using

when interacting with simple humanoid robots, whereas there are no differences in disclosure for typical

children. Meanwhile, [65] found that children accept the use of robots in instructions in which they used AsiRo-

μ to detect hand gestures, automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech function, and gesture imitation. However,

as it is only a robot face and has limited movements, the results showed that children with disabilities found it

difficult to imitate the requested gestures, even if they tried, as it still needs support from a person. However, the

results for listening were positive as they easily understood the questions as they tried to make the gestures they

liked. Lastly for humanoid robots, a study by Arshad [66] focused on four results which are (i) promoted interest

and engagement; (ii) increased attention and focus; (iii) triggered interaction and communication and (iv) created

a happy and fun learning environment. Their study found that social interaction affected cognition, which

includes eye contact, turn-taking, purposive and imitative, and gave positive results towards using the robot as

Difficulty in paying attention; (ii) The inability to sit and (iii) Difficulty following instructions). They

recommended that future studies consider adding more movements to the robot and changing its form. Finally,

a study by Paul in 2021 [68] on verbal, found that spontaneous verbal responses increased when Cozmo acted

as a Co-Instructor. Spontaneous responses from the children could also result from the robots' appearances, as

toy robots may feel non-threatening as opposed to humanoids. Moreover, they discovered that online

Another study using a non-humanoid robot is [69] which uses the Jibo robot to treat children with ASD.

According to the statistical studies, the treatment suggested could maintain the children's interest. Furthermore,

children remained more involved in sessions with familiar activities than new ones. This study measures the

engagement between robots and children with ASD. Five activities were done with the robot: dances, songs,

emotions, touch me, and storytelling. All these activities were used to measure the engagement of the children

immersive virtual reality environment helps children with autism learning third language. The study has run a

Finally, a study by [71] implementing the virtual reality to help children with ASD found that the ability of the

vr capable of raising up the social skills among children with ASD. From the baseline to the intervention period,

the participants' performance in social skills has improved. At follow-up, the enhanced performance in self-

With the newest gadgets and apps, assistive technology helps children with ASDs and intellectual disabilities