MOLHEM: An innovative android application with an interactive avatar-based chatbot for Arab children with ASD.

The teaching of children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Arabic-speaking countries depends mainly on the traditional techniques which are limited and outdated. On the other hand, smartphone applications (apps) have become an essential part of the current life style. They are literally used to accomplish thousands of different tasks related to almost every possible aspect of daily life. However, the available apps related to the children with ASD in Arabic countries are extremely rare and limited in their features and services. Motivated by that, this work tries to fill the shortage in this area by presenting MOLHEM as a helping app for Arab children with ASD that comes with an interactive avatar based chatbot. The proposed system aims mainly to improve the child's different social skills in addition to enhance the linguistic and mathematical abilities. In fact, MOLHEM has a variety of interactive teaching tools including stories, music, videos, and others. Moreover, the chatbot allows the child to have real conversations in both Arabic or English languages with a chatbot represented by a cartoon character avatar. On the other hand, the parent will have the privileges to supervise the child's usage of the app, get regular performance and activity reports, in addition to control the sessions' length. In fact, MOLHEM was practically tested by a group of specialists and parents of autistics and the feedback we got was very promising. As a future work, we plan to create an IOS version, add new learning categories, allow shared playing for a group of users, and include artificial intelligence techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]