Internet of Things A to Z

20An Internet of Things Approach to “Read” the Emotion of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Tiffany Y. Tang and Pinata Winoto

Wenzhou-Kean Autism Research Network, Assistive Technology Research and Development Center, Department of Computer Science, Wenzhou-Kean University, Zhejiang Province, China

20.1 Introduction

Following the discussion on the contributions of Internet of Things (IoT) in health science and management in previous chapters, this chapter describes a prototype of IoT system designed specifically to help children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are notoriously known to lack some social skills. Specifically, the application is designed to help both users with or without ASD to recognize their emotion in order to facilitate social interaction. Since the effectiveness of the prototype has not been clinically tested, readers are advised to consider it as another future IoT application in health and learning management. In this chapter, we describe the design and development of such an IoT prototype.

During a social interaction, it is important for all participants to interpret correctly the emotional nature of the message being communicated in order to avoid misunderstanding. Prior researches in the past decades have pointed out the lack of emotion recognition skills and social interaction skills among children and adults with ASD and the possible causal link between the former and the latter (Harms et al., 2010, Baron-Cohen et al., 1993). Since all ...