Title :
Improving communication skills of children with ASDs through interaction with virtual characters
Author :
Abirached, B. ; Yan Zhang ; Aggarwal, J.K. ; Tamersoy, Birgi ; Fernandes, Telmo ; Miranda, J.C. ; Orvalho, V.
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Inf., Univ. of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Abstract :
This article presents the LIFEisGAME project, a serious game that will help children with ASDs to recognize and express emotions through facial expressions. The game design tackles the main experiential learning cycle of emotion recognition: watch and recognize, learn by doing, recognize and mimic, generalize or knowledge transfer to real life. We briefly describe the technology behind the character animation pipeline centered on the creation of a generic rig. Then, we detail the facial expression analyzer that uses Active Appearance Models. Last, we describe the user study experiment using game mode “recognize the expression”.
Keywords :
computer animation; computer games; emotion recognition; face recognition; handicapped aids; learning (artificial intelligence); ASD; LIFEisGAME project; active appearance models; autism spectrum disorder; character animation pipeline; communication skills; emotion recognition; facial expressions; main experiential learning cycle; serious game; virtual characters; Autism; Avatars; Emotion recognition; Face; Face recognition; Games; Three dimensional displays; HCI; autism spectrum disorder; consumer health informatics; emotion recognition; emotions; facial animation; serious games;
Conference_Titel :
Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH), 2011 IEEE 1st International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Braga
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-0433-7
DOI :
10.1109/SeGAH.2011.6165464