A Multi Modal Intervention Framework for Improving Situational Awareness in Autistic Individuals by Predicting Emotional Outbursts

Today is the World Autism Awareness Day. At the University of Agder, I am supervising our talented PhD Fellow Saishashank Balaji, who is working on a research project titled "A Multi Modal Intervention Framework for Improving Situational Awareness in Autistic Individuals by Predicting Emotional Outbursts". The objective of this work is threefold: i) to utilise commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensor technology (i.e., personal sensors as well as environmental sensors) to collect different biosignals (i.e., electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate (HR)), design a multi-modal user-centred fusion model, and develop adaptive control algorithms for meltdowns mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery; ii) to design novel, minimally invasive, highly acceptable wearable devices to complement existing biometric sensors and to exploit the potential of tactile empathy applied to all stages of a meltdown; iii) to investigate the feasibility of adopting social robots (i.e., the EVE humanoid robot from Halodi Robotics) to establish a social empathic relation using an embodied companion.