Project Glass is a new technology that has been developed by Google. It uses an optical head-mounted display designed in the shape of a pair of eyeglasses. Users can communicate with the glasses by using natural language voice commands, and can download free applications that are built by third-party developers. The glasses feature a touchpad located on the side of the glass, a camera, and an LED illuminated display.
The Brain Power Autism System was studied by Keshav and colleagues (2017) and uses the google glasses to enhance social communication with children with ASD. It can be purchased for your home for $1600 for the basic version, which includes a pair of google glasses, apps, a training program, and an account for your child. For $2100 you can get the luxe version, which includes all of the above plus an extra two child accounts, a parent data portal, bonus apps, and perpetual updates. The system uses various games and apps. One game, named the Face Game, helps the user to work on direct eye gaze and paying attention to avatars, and it uses a points system for correct behaviour. This game detects human faces anywhere in the user’s field of view, which are then overlaid with an augmented reality cartoon face in a manner that attempts to engage the user and attract his or her attention. Another game, the Emotion Game, detects and identifies human emotions using augmented reality to increase user engagement and interest in human faces. It detects human faces and uses a visual display to prompt the user to correctly identify the facial emotion in the detected human face by presenting them with two emoticon choices. Games like these help to teach your child nonverbal communication, social engagement, and eye contact skills.
The study by Keshav and colleagues (2017) found that 19 of 21 participants with ASD found the system tolerable and the glasses comfortable. Another study by Liu and colleagues (2017) found that the games were accepted by the users, and significantly improved social interactions of the participants. Both of these studies had a strength score of 1, due to a lack of controlling confounding factors and an inadequate blinding process.
Purchase the Brain Power Autism System (Requires Google Glasses)