Fostering emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum disorder

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Vinicius Corrêa Alves
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Soares, Filomena, Esteves, João Sena, Santos, Cristina, Pereira, Ana Paula da Silva
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/75361
• topic: Human Computer Interaction; Zeno R50 Robot; Human Com Support Vector Machine; Facial Expressions; Emotions Recognition; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Support Vector Machine; Facial expres-sions; Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática; Science & Technology; Educação de qualidade

Facial expressions are of utmost importance in social interactions, allowing communicative prompts for a speaking turn and feedback. Nevertheless, not all have the ability to express themselves socially and emotionally in verbal and non-verbal communication. In particular, individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social communication, repetitive patterns of behaviour, and restricted activities or interests. In the literature, the use of robotic tools is reported to promote social interaction with children with ASD. The main goal of this work is to develop a system capable of automatic detecting emotions through facial expressions and interfacing them with a robotic platform (Zeno R50 Robokind® robotic platform, named ZECA) in order to allow social interaction with children with ASD. ZECA was used as a mediator in social communication activities. The experimental setup and methodology for a real-time facial expression (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and neutral) recognition system was based on the Intel® RealSense™ 3D sensor and on facial features extraction and multiclass Support Vector Machine classifier. The results obtained allowed to infer that the proposed system is adequate in support sessions with children with ASD, giving a strong indication that it may be used in fostering emotion recognition and imitation skills.