An auditory feedback based system for treating autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

A system for real-time gesture tracking is presented, used in active well-being self-assessment activities and in particular applied to medical coaching and music-therapy. The system is composed of a gestural interface and a computer running own (custom) developed software. During the test sessions a person freely moves his body inside a specifically designed room. The algorithms detect and extrapolate features from the human figure, such us spatial position, arms and legs angles, etc. An operator can link these features to sounds synthesized in real time, following a predefined schema. The augmented interaction with the environment helps to improve the contact with reality in subjects having autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The system has been tested on a set of young subjects and a team of psychologists has analyzed the results of this experimentation. Moreover, we developed a home version of the system, to be used without any operators, in order to maintain the obtained benefits. This paper is an extended version of the paper presented at REHAB 2015 [1].