AI Educational Robot for Autism and ADHD: Empowering Children with Autism a
Discover a high-quality AI educational robot I built to support learning for children with Autism and ADHD
Discover a high-quality AI educational robot I built to support learning for children with Autism and ADHD
Synapsis Health AI is a Canadian robotics company. I build a companion robot that helps children with autism practise at home — the goals their therapist sets, the skills their teacher is working on, and the homework that lands on the kitchen table every evening.
The company started with my own child, and with everything I had — my RRSP and my lines of credit. The robot is fully functional today, and the software is already shared with a school board and with therapists (click Homework Helper above).
I'm Reza Shoja Ghiass, an AI and robotics engineer with over ten years in computer vision, robotics and multimodal AI. I have an MSc from Sharif University of Technology and a PhD from Laval University. I built perception and robotics systems at Zebra Technologies and at Vrvana (acquired by Apple), and I'm an inventor on US Patent US11100303B2. In September 2022 I left my job to become my son's caregiver — and to build the thing I could not buy.
My Mission
Even one life matters. I built this for one child — mine. Everything since has been about reaching the next one, and the one after that.
A tablet is passive: the child holds it, the child controls it, and it drifts to games within seconds — and the moment it does, the practice is over and nobody knows it happened. A robot holds the room. It is physically present, it initiates rather than waits, it looks at the child, and it asks again patiently when no answer comes. It behaves less like software and more like a private tutor who never gets tired and never runs out of time.
Each robot takes the form of a character that child already loves, produced with the rights holder's permission. A special interest is a strength to build on, not a behaviour to work around — and it is what earns engagement from a child who has learned to tune out most instruction.
A therapist sets a speech, ABA or OT goal in the app. A parent photographs the day's math sheet, adds a few instructions, and the robot works through it with the child — waiting when they stall, celebrating when they succeed, yielding when they have had enough. Every interaction is recorded, so parents and practitioners see objective evidence of what was practised rather than a subjective note from a weekly session.
Incorporated and operating in Ontario, with two provisional patents filed on the core approach. A pilot will place units in 10–20 family homes for a full year, at no cost to participating families. Production stays in Canada, and we are designing it to create jobs for people with autism across the spectrum.
Synapsis supports therapists, educators and physicians. It never replaces them, and it is not a diagnostic or medical device.
If you are the parent of a child with autism or ADHD and would like a customized robot, contact me at reza@synapsis-health.ai
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