SBIR Phase I: Alleviating Social Skills Disorders through Avatars and Game Based Learning

Small Factory Innovations, Monmouth Beach NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This Phase I project seeks to combine proven social skills training techniques and curriculum with animation and game-based learning by developing easily accessible software. The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder births, as reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has risen by 110% from 1 in 150 to 1 in 68 births in the past decade. Third-party research finds that individuals whose social skills deficits persist into adulthood are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation. The software is currently personal computer (PC) only and has been tested with great success. This project now seeks to develop a browser-based version in an effort to become device agnostic and more available to the 129,315 schools and over 50,000 hospitals and private practices nationally according to Census data. This project will also begin exploring uncharted territory of integrating virtual reality into social skills training to further increase effectiveness. Given its potential impact on student engagement and socialization and the $50 billion spent annually on special needs students, the software is commercially viable. It is also flexible enough to be used with curriculum for speech therapy, bullying awareness, foreign languages, life-skills training, job training, and socially-conscious role playing. This project aims to bring the first generation PC version of the social skills training software to additional platforms: browsers and virtual reality. A browser version is required to eliminate hardware obstacles for more widespread and convenient access throughout the social skills training software market. Technical challenges for browser-based development include establishing a continuous server-client connection to record interactions, compressing streamed data, synchronizing audio/video, and testing peripherals. Bringing the software to virtual reality (VR) is achievable, but costlier and more complicated than the browser-based version. The first innovation will be creating VR software that is flexible enough for future technological advancements and use across various platforms. The most profound innovation of our VR platform will be building collaborative/social VR software that can sync live input/capture from multiple users on multiple devices in one virtual space. This requires extensive development and testing to get a uniquely customized server-client system in place. The software will incorporate heat mapping and eye tracking technology to help evaluate the effectiveness of learning experiences through internal user experience, and more formal studies by our university partners. The software is expected to be the first VR based social skills training platforms and will unlock boundless new social interactive and engaging learning opportunities.