Assessment System for Imitative Ability for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Based on Human Pose Estimation

Hanwei Ma, Bowen Chen, Weihong Ren, Ziheng Wang, Zhiyong Wang, Weibo Jiang, Ruihan Lin, Honghai Liu

Abstract: Autism spectrum disorders is a range of neurodevelopmental conditions primarily characterized by difficulties in social interactions, differences in communication, and presentations of rigid and repetitive behavior. The evidence shows that the functional social behavior of children with autism can be enhanced by early intervention. However, traditional intervention methods meet problems, e.g., assessment results are varied from one clinician to another while sometimes children are lack of interest in intervention. To address these problems, we design a computer-aided motion imitation assessment system based on human pose estimation in this paper. The system is implemented by Unity3D. We recruit 10 people (5 people with imitation ability defect and 5 people without imitation ability defect) participated in the experiment, and the result shows that the system can effectively evaluate the motion imitation ability. Finally, three future development directions of the system are further discussed for better application in autistic early intervention.