Robotic Technologies in ADHD Care: Literature Review
Open accessAbstract
Robotics has made it possible to change and improve many support processes for vulnerable people in different settings. In recent years, its use has been oriented toward supporting therapeutic interventions of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This review of the literature highlights how advances in robotics have evolved in different scenarios of ADHD treatment, its collaboration with other emerging technologies, its results, its limitations, and the research challenges for the future development of robotics in the field of supporting children with ADHD. The authors conducted a literature review based on the location of keywords ‘robotics’ and several NNDs such as ‘ADHD’, ’Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)’, ‘cerebral palsy’, and ‘dementia’ in titles, abstracts, and introduction of scientific articles in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) database. The reviewed literature was classified according to the type of therapy supported by the robots, the type of robot and the associated technologies. From this analysis, we can solve the research question: Which types of robots have the potential for specific applications in ADHD treatment? Furthermore, this article shows that despite favorable technical results, robotic technologies that support ADHD therapies require significant improvements in terms of scalability, human-machine interaction, and treatment and processing of acquired information to be applied effectively in real-world therapies. The most significant research challenges are proposed to drive research efforts to develop new approaches to enable robotic assistants to participate in ADHD therapies.
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Use of conversational agents was predominantly investigated in relation to a broad range of mental health problems, or specifically related to cognitive and social abilities, without considering the emotional component of mental health.
“Moreover, use of CAs was predominantly investigated in relation to a broad range of mental health problems15,16, or specifically related to cognitive and social abilities, without considering the emotional component of mental health24,25.”
From Use of automated conversational agents in improving young population mental health: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
The portion attributed to this review says robotic interventions addressed cognitive and social abilities without considering emotion. Although the review describes social-skills interventions, its “Improvement of Traditional Therapeutic Sessions” section explicitly describes interventions targeting emotional problems and well-being; “Intervention of Educational Therapy” also describes emotion recognition and emotional guidance. The passages provided do not give page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredPrevious reviews limited their focus to a subset of conversational agents based on the embodiment level.
“Third, the previous reviews limited their focus to a subset of CAs based on the embodiment level, such as disembodied CAs13,20, CAs with virtual representation15, or with a physical representation23–25.”
From Use of automated conversational agents in improving young population mental health: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
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References 122 · Cited by 38
Research works printed but not linked: 7
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- Authors
- Berrezueta-Guzman, J., Robles-Bykbaev, V. E., Pau, I., Pesantez-Aviles, F., & Martin-Ruiz, M.-L.
- Affiliations
- Departamento de Ingeniería Telemática y Electrónica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Politecnica Salesiana University (EC)
- GI-IATa, UNESCO Chair on Support Technologies for Educational Inclusion, Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Cuenca, Ecuador
- Venue
- IEEE Access
- Published
- 2022
- Volume
- 10
- Pages
- 608-625
- ISSN
- 2169-3536 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4206427013
- Cited by
- 38
- References
- 122
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 5.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- IEEE Access (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- mediaTUM – the media and publications repository of the Technical University Munich (Technical University Munich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- UNESCO Chair on Support Technologies for Educational Inclusion, Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Ecuador
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Keywords
- robotics, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD treatment, neurodevelopmental disorders, therapeutic robots, autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, dementia, human-robot interaction, assistive technology, children with ADHD, scalability
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