With the index touching the screen is pushed and draws a line to the expression of a smile. Push is another line that pretends to be the raised eyebrow and the eye to reveal another emotion. While pushing lines, we see a face to react. A man with a beard and bald poorly made that despite the friendly animals and dolls that can be offered, it seems to be the favorite of children. We are in LifeisGame, a computer game made to think about children who have an autism spectrum disorder and need to learn to identify the expression of emotions in a human face.
Just call it the computer game is LifeisGame little when you consider its potential but let us focus on what researchers at the University of Porto have to show at this time. The tool - an unprecedented technological base that will be applied in various media (from the personal computer to an iPhone or iPad, through 3D, virtual reality and digital desk) and have several levels of difficulty - is being developed by a team which includes the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, College of Psychology experts and therapists create the Association, a project that is part of the UP in collaboration with the University of Austin, Texas. There are also partners such as the Technological Institute and Microsoft, which helps optimize the work plan funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology. And, of course, boys are also part of the team.
In total, more than 30 researchers, some students in doctoral or master's degree. The central objective is to help build an unprecedented tool for the therapy of autistic children. That they may have more or less (depending on the child's emotional deficit) difficulty recognizing emotions in the human face are, for now, the center of everything. The investigation began about a year and Veronica Dew, Principal Investigator, who is a lecturer in the department of Computer Science, confirms that the most basic levels and are ready to be tested for children with autistic spectrum disorders (see box at right ). But the researcher does not want to miss this opportunity to make urgent appeal: "We need to have more associations and institutions working with these children that want to participate in this project, helping us to validate this tool and find the best options for them ".
LifeisGame can now be explored in the personal computer but by September the project leader hopes to have some challenges this game to present a version iPhone and iPad. The idea is to have a game that can be taken home so that children can "play" and work with parents. Veronica Dew like it that in September, already with the iPhone and iPad version, this therapeutic tool should be freely available to children. "Before starting this project I realized that there were hundreds of games and other support for working with colors, with language and other difficulties that these children may have. But we have not found anything that works with the expression of emotions," explains Veronica Dew .
In the future, this "game" can still be incorporated into the "melody of speech" to "communicate" with the child who uses it, and perhaps also help in therapy dedicated to language difficulties, adds James Fernandes, a student of PhD in Computer Science. "It may seem too simple to say that we will join the voice but is very complex," he warns. In addition to voice, there is another difficult step to realizing the future: to give body to a character. And then to a scenario.
Everything is very complex in design of this new technology platform. But outside of the computer world, decisions are not easy. Take the case of the choice of images that will be used (at the most basic of the game) to show the expression of emotions. According to Cristina Queiroz, a researcher at the Faculty of Psychology, had to go to a Dutch database with hundreds of photographs and then validate the images that best reproduce these emotions with a control group with more than 400 adults and children who have disorders the autistic spectrum. The same strategy is used to choose a realistic character (human face) and an animal or a doll.
Source publico.pt/
Just call it the computer game is LifeisGame little when you consider its potential but let us focus on what researchers at the University of Porto have to show at this time. The tool - an unprecedented technological base that will be applied in various media (from the personal computer to an iPhone or iPad, through 3D, virtual reality and digital desk) and have several levels of difficulty - is being developed by a team which includes the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, College of Psychology experts and therapists create the Association, a project that is part of the UP in collaboration with the University of Austin, Texas. There are also partners such as the Technological Institute and Microsoft, which helps optimize the work plan funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology. And, of course, boys are also part of the team.
LifeisGame can now be explored in the personal computer but by September the project leader hopes to have some challenges this game to present a version iPhone and iPad. The idea is to have a game that can be taken home so that children can "play" and work with parents. Veronica Dew like it that in September, already with the iPhone and iPad version, this therapeutic tool should be freely available to children. "Before starting this project I realized that there were hundreds of games and other support for working with colors, with language and other difficulties that these children may have. But we have not found anything that works with the expression of emotions," explains Veronica Dew .
In the future, this "game" can still be incorporated into the "melody of speech" to "communicate" with the child who uses it, and perhaps also help in therapy dedicated to language difficulties, adds James Fernandes, a student of PhD in Computer Science. "It may seem too simple to say that we will join the voice but is very complex," he warns. In addition to voice, there is another difficult step to realizing the future: to give body to a character. And then to a scenario.
Everything is very complex in design of this new technology platform. But outside of the computer world, decisions are not easy. Take the case of the choice of images that will be used (at the most basic of the game) to show the expression of emotions. According to Cristina Queiroz, a researcher at the Faculty of Psychology, had to go to a Dutch database with hundreds of photographs and then validate the images that best reproduce these emotions with a control group with more than 400 adults and children who have disorders the autistic spectrum. The same strategy is used to choose a realistic character (human face) and an animal or a doll.
Source publico.pt/
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