Emerging technology, especially robotic technology, has been shown to be appealing to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Such interest may be leveraged to provide repeatable, accurate and individualized intervention services to young children with ASD based on quantitative metrics. However, existing robot-mediated systems tend to have limited adaptive capability that may impact individualization. Our current work seeks to bridge this gap by developing an adaptive and individualized robot-mediated technology for children with ASD. The system is composed of a humanoid robot with its vision augmented by a network of cameras for real-time head tracking using a distributed architecture. Based on the cues from the child’s head movement, the robot intelligently adapts itself in an individualized manner to generate prompts and reinforcements with potential to promote skills in the ASD core deficit area of early social orienting. The system was validated for feasibility, accuracy, and performance. Results from a pilot usability study involving six children with ASD and a control group of six typically developing (TD) children are presented.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate potent impairments in social communication skills including atypical viewing patterns during social interactions. Recently, several assistive technologies, particularly virtual reality (VR), have been investigated to address specific social deficits in this population. Some studies have coupled eye-gaze monitoring mechanisms to design intervention strategies. However, presently available systems are designed to primarily chain learning via aspects of one’s performance only which affords restricted range of individualization. The presented work seeks to bridge this gap by developing a novel VR-based interactive system with Gaze-sensitive adaptive response technology that can seamlessly integrate VR-based tasks with eye-tracking techniques to intelligently facilitate engagement in tasks relevant to advancing social communication skills. Specifically, such a system is capable of objectively identifying and quantifying one’s engagement level by measuring real-time viewing patterns, subtle changes in eye physiological responses, as well as performance metrics in order to adaptively respond in an individualized manner to foster improved social communication skills among the participants. The developed system was tested through a usability study with eight adolescents with ASD. The results indicate the potential of the system to promote improved social task performance along with socially-appropriate mechanisms during VR-based social conversation tasks.

Objective: Cerebrovascular accidents are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. We hypothesized that cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) of the dentate nuclei and the lower-limb representations in the cerebellum can improve functional reach during standing balance in chronic (>6 months’ post-stroke) stroke survivors. Materials and Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based subject-specific electric field was computed across a convenience sample of 10 male chronic (>6 months) stroke survivors and one healthy MRI template to find an optimal bipolar bilateral ctDCS montage to target dentate nuclei and lower-limb representations (lobules VII–IX). Then, in a repeated-measure crossover study on a subset of 5 stroke survivors, we compared 15 min of 2 mA ctDCS based on the effects on successful functional reach (%) during standing balance task. Three-way ANOVA investigated the factors of interest– brain regions, montages, stroke participants, and their interactions. Results: “One-size-fits-all” bipolar ctDCS montage for the clinical study was found to be PO9h–PO10h for dentate nuclei and Exx7–Exx8 for lobules VII–IX with the contralesional anode. PO9h–PO10h ctDCS performed significantly (alpha = 0.05) better in facilitating successful functional reach (%) when compared to Exx7–Exx8 ctDCS. Furthermore, a linear relationship between successful functional reach (%) and electric field strength was found where PO9h–PO10h montage resulted in a significantly (alpha = 0.05) higher electric field strength when compared to Exx7–Exx8 montage for the same 2 mA current. Conclusion: We presented a rational neuroimaging based approach to optimize deep ctDCS of the dentate nuclei and lower limb representations in the cerebellum for post-stroke balance rehabilitation. However, this promising pilot study was limited by “one-size-fits-all” bipolar ctDCS montage as well as a small sample size.

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Impairments in social communication skills are thought to be core deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In recent years, several assistive technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), have been investigated to promote social interactions in this population. It is well known that children with ASD demonstrate atypical viewing patterns during social interactions and thus monitoring eye-gaze can be valuable to design intervention strategies. While several studies have used eye-tracking technology to monitor eye-gaze for offline analysis, there exists no real-time system that can monitor eye-gaze dynamically and provide individualized feedback. Given the promise of VR-based social interaction and the usefulness of monitoring eye-gaze in real-time, a novel VR-based dynamic eye-tracking system is developed in this work. This system, called Virtual Interactive system with Gaze-sensitive Adaptive Response Technology (VIGART), is capable of delivering individualized feedback based on a child’s dynamic gaze patterns during VR-based interaction. Results from a usability study with six adolescents with ASD are presented that examines the acceptability and usefulness of VIGART. The results in terms of improvement in behavioral viewing and changes in relevant eye physiological indexes of participants while interacting with VIGART indicate the potential of this novel technology.

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Investigation into technology-assisted intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has gained momentum in recent years. Research suggests that robots could be a viable means to impart skills to this population since children with ASD tend to be fascinated by robots. However, if robots are to be used to impart social skills, a primary deficit for this population, considerable attention needs to be paid to aspects of social acceptability of such robots. Currently there are no design guidelines as to how to develop socially acceptable robots to be used for intervention for children with ASD. As a first step, this work investigates social design of virtual robots for children with ASD. In this paper we describe the design of a virtual environment system for social interaction (VESSI). The design is evaluated through an innovative experiment plan that combines subjective ratings from a clinical observer with physiological responses indicative of affective states from the participants, both collected when participants engage in social tasks with the social robots in a virtual reality environment. Two social parameters of importance for this population, namely eye gaze and social distance, are systematically varied to analyze the response of the participants. The results are presented to illustrate how experiments with virtual social robots can contribute towards the development of future social robots for children with ASD.

Ambulation is a fundamental requirement of human beings for enjoying healthy community life. A neurological disorder such as stroke can significantly affect one's gait thereby restricting one's active community participation. To quantify one's gait, spatiotemporal gait parameters are widely used in clinical context with different tests such as 10 meter walk test, 6 min walk test, etc. Though these conventional observation-based methods are powerful, yet they often suffer from subjectivity, a scarcity of adequately trained therapists and frequent clinical visits for assessment. Researchers have been exploring the technology-assisted solutions for gait characterization. There are laboratory-based stereophotogrammetric methods and walk mats that are powerful tools as far as gait characterization is concerned. However, these suffer from issues with portability, accessibility due to high cost, labor-intensiveness, etc. Faced with these issues, our present research tries to investigate and quantify the gait abnormalities in individuals with neurological disorder by using a portable and cost-effective instrumented shoes (ShoesFSR henceforth). The in-house developed ShoesFSR comprised of a pair of shoes instrumented with Force Sensing Resistors (FSR) and a wireless data acquisition unit. The real-time FSR data was acquired wirelessly and analyzed by a central console to offer quantitative indices of one's gait. Studies were conducted with 15 healthy participants and 9 post-stroke survivors. The spatiotemporal gait parameters of healthy participants measured using ShoesFSR were validated with standard methods such as stereophotogrammetric system and paper-based setup. Statistical analysis showed good agreement between the gait parameters measured using ShoesFSR and the standard methods. Specifically, the mean absolute error of the spatial parameters measured by the ShoesFSR, in the worst case, was 1.24% and that for the temporal parameters was 1.12% with that measured by standard methods for healthy gait. This research shows the potential of the ShoesFSR to quantify gait abnormality of post-stroke hemiplegic patients. In turn, the results show a promise for the future clinical use of the ShoesFSR.