FonAPP: An Interactive Application for the Therapeutic Intervention of Children with Dyslalia from Embedded Devices and Robotic Assistants

According to various studies conducted in Cuenca, Ecuador, most school children with speech disorders have dyslalia pathologies. However, in Ecuador, most special education/rehabilitation centers continue to use traditional materials to carry out therapy sessions for children with dyslalia. This situation is due to the few existing tools commonly are developed in other countries (such as Spain) and not address the patient's needs (context, idiosyncrasy, and local vocabulary). For these reasons, we present an educational application that can be used by speech-language therapists during the therapy sessions (face-to-face or online). This tool is designed to be executed in both, desktop computers and embedded devices that control educational robots (such as Raspberry PI or similar boards). Currently, the application contains several exercises and activities related to the 27 phonemes of the Spanish language. In the same way, the application includes an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) module that can work with online/offline servers. To evaluate the accuracy and app features, we conducted an experiment with a team of experts in the speech-language therapy area.