Index | Contact | Web Map | Accessibility | Orange

 

PICTOGRAM ROOM

Driven by Fundación Orange and developed by the Autism and Learning Difficulties Group of the Robotics Institute of the University of Valencia, Spain, in collaboration with three European universities: Weimar, Birmingham and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The project has received the support of the Spanish Tourism, Commerce and Industry Ministry's Avanza Plan. The Associations Autismo Ávila and Autismo Burgos are collaborating for the experimental evaluations.

Pictogram Room uses Augmented Reality to teach people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to understand pictograms or glyphs creating a virtual space with highly customizable educational activities.

Many personal accounts of individuals with ASD suggest that a majority is visual thinkers, learning better when visual supports are provided. Recent research with using brain imaging techniques with at least a group of individuals with ASD have demonstrated that they use those areas of the brain typically dedicated to visual processing even when the task they have to solve is non visual.

In another hand, Pictograms have proved their effectiveness as communication and learning instruments for autistic people. Therefore, they are increasingly being used for people with ASD who in the majority learn to manage them. But do they really understand what is being represented in each pictogram? When consulting the teachers of ASD students, they often point out that just a slight change in the pictogram, means that students more seriously affected with autism would not understand it.

On the basis of these premises, the Pictogram Room project is developing a room with augmented reality, allowing the possibility of using superimposing pictograms on real objects which could help autistic people to see the connection between a real image and a pictogram in real time. Within this space, the user is able to see himself in front of a virtual mirror, with his own image being accompanied by a pictogram (a stick person) that follow his movements on real time or acts according to the ongoing educational activity.

This virtual space includes more than 30 highly customizable educational activities, developed by a multidisciplinary team with experts from education, psychology, computer vision, computer music and augmented reality, and organised around the following issues: objects and concept formation; kinaesthetic-visual matching; joint attention, imitation, communication and relationships.

Within the joint attention domain, for example, there is a Pointing Activity where the child has to point to flying bubbles with his/her hand. If he/she does so, then his favourite music plays for a while and the bubble disappears. Later on, within the ‘Joint Attention Activity’, the child and the teacher have to point to the same bubble in order for the music to play. This particular educational process has been designed for encouraging the child to share attention with the teacher (or a second child) to the same object, accompanying it with his favourite music.

ollowing the verification of the tests carried out by the specialist groups and the final design of an educational programme, a solution will be developed during 2010 and 2011 directed specifically at centers, associations and schools. In the future, the only equipment needed will be a webcam, a projector, a computer connected to the Internet and already developed software that will be available for free download from the Internet