How Google Glass can improve autistic children’s social skills by reading facial expressions
Children with autism have difficulty reading social cues and discerning other people’s emotions. Studies have shown that using Google Glass improves their ability to read facial expressions, making it an ideal tool in places such as China that have few therapists available
Google Glass – the once globally hyped smart glasses – seemed to have slipped off the radar after sales were suspended in 2015, just three years after they were launched. Now it is being hailed as a life-changing device for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
People with autism have trouble with social skills, and verbal and non-verbal communication.
Researchers at Stanford University have harnessed Google Glass to develop a form of self-guided therapy that families can use to coach an autistic child to read emotions in faces, ultimately improving their ability to interact with others.
Catalin Voss is the founder of the Autism Glass Project. The Stanford School of Medicine graduate student spoke at the EmTech Hong Kong 2018 conference in Hong Kong this month about his team’s augmented reality therapy that taps the Google Glass technology.
“The goal is to give a learning aid to kids and families,” explains the entrepreneur, who had previously sold his start-up Sension, a face- and eye-tracking-based innovation that discerns facial expressions, to a Toyota-owned company.
“In general, it has improved eye contact, increased emotional recognition abilities and increased engagement in the family,” he says.