Touchless Motion-Based Interaction for Therapy of Autistic Children

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by abnormal behaviors along multiple dimensions (socialization, communication, and imagination). An increasing number of technologies devoted to children with autism have appeared in the research arena and the marketplace. Our interest is on interactive tools that exploit motion-based touchless interaction, where technology can be controlled using body movements and gestures without wearing additional aides (e.g., data gloves, head mounted display, remote controllers, or body markers). In spite of the increasing popularity of this interaction paradigm, its adoption in therapeutic and educational contexts for autistic children is very limited and research in this domain is still in its infancy. The chapter provides an overview of the current state of the art and describes a field study and that explores the benefits of motion-based touchless gaming for autistic children with low-moderate cognitive deficit, low- medium sensory-motor dysfunction, and motor autonomy. Our findings show that motion-based touchless gaming led to improvements of attention skills for all participants to own study, and suggest future research directions in interactive technology for autistic children.