ASC-Inclusion Interactive Emotion Games The Case, Initiatives and Impact Björn Schuller Institute for Human-Machine Interaction Technische Universität München, Germany DGEI Expert Workshop, 23/24 January 2012, Seville, Spain
ASC-Inclusion Aims to create internet-based platform to assist children with ASC Improve their socio-emotional communication skills relating to: The recognition and expression of socio-emotional cues Björn Schuller 3
ASC-Inclusion concept One comprehensive environment including multi-modal interaction: Face analysis Voice analysis Body gesture analysis and training through: Virtual worlds Serious games Text chatting Animation Video and audio clips Björn Schuller 4
Target audience Children of age 5-10, with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) Parents of children with high-functioning ASC Therapists who specialise in ASC NGOs and governmental institutes that support the ASC population Björn Schuller 5
State-of-the-art and current issues Individuals with ASC are hyper-attentive to detail and prefer predictable, rule-based environments and systems. Socio-Emotional Communication training via ICT for ASC: Mind Reading The Transporters These two series resulted in improvement in emotion recognition skills Interactive Communication Technologies (ICT), provide an easily available solution, enabling users everywhere to enjoy professional support online. Björn Schuller 6
Social impact 1. Increased motivation and interest of children in socioemotional phenomena. 2. Improvement in children s expressive emotional repertoire (including facial expressions, vocal intonation, body language and vocabulary). 3. Improvement in children s emotion recognition skills (from facial expressions, voice intonation, body language, and context). 4. Improvement in parents socio-emotional awareness and socio-emotional mediation skills. 5. Improvement in children s social skills and adaptive behavior at home and in school. Björn Schuller 7
Expected economic impact STATISTICS Costs of supporting children with ASC each year Share of population with ASC Percentage of EU population aged 5 to 10 years that ASC-Inclusion service reaches (end of project year 1 ) Average savings attributable to users of ASC Inclusion Annual saving in year 1 Size of target EU users Number users of ASC-Inclusion service in year 1 EU 25bn 1% 5% 10% 120m 290,000 14,500 Björn Schuller 8
Dissemination Promotion at Autism community events Promotion at technology community events Conferences / workshops E-Newsletters Website ASC-Inclusion Press releases Magazines dealing with autism Feature articles (AE s LINK) Technology Magazines Social media Scientific autism journals Academic articles Björn Schuller 9
Exploitation Search engine optimization (SEO): is the process of improving the visibility of a website Pay per click (PPC): is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites Affiliation network: intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs Björn Schuller 10
Exploitation details Market segments: Estimated 5 million people with ASC internet with its viral effects might outreach to more population Promoting other segments like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Internet penetration: about 84% of the E27 households with children have an internet computer (Eurostat 10/193, Dec 2010) The Project's content will be translated to the major European languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Hebrew and Swedish) with the intention to later translate it to most of the European languages. Parents and carers of ASC children are willing to invest significant amounts in promoting the skills and inclusion of their ASC children Björn Schuller 11
Clustering DGEI cluster: ASC-Inclusion, TARDIS and MASELTOV Autism-related cluster: ASC-Inclusion, FIRST Share technical solutions First closed workshop in M6 in Graz, Austria (DGEI) International workshop in M6 (Autism-related clustering) Share methodologies Share engineering requirements DGEI Autism-related Clustering Video conferences with other consortia Periodic reports on clustering activities Share exploitation Share dissemination channels Consortia representative members in advisory boards Björn Schuller 12
Thank You. ASC-Inclusion Interactive Emotion Games http://www.asc-inclusion.eu/ Björn Schuller 13