Mouse-Less Cursor Control for Quadriplegic and Autistic Patients Using Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a lifelong neurological developmental disorder characterised by repetitive patterns of behaviour and impaired development in communication, interaction, and understanding of social clues. Genes also play a significant role in the increasing number of cases of ASD as it can be inherited genetically. It is called a spectrum disorder because of the wide variation in the type and severity of symptoms experienced by autistic individuals. They suffer from verbal and non-verbal communication impairments, motor difficulties and have limited range of interests and activities. They find it difficult to communicate with people, spontaneously greet them, understand facial expressions, maintain eye contact and perform decision making. Some of them face difficulty in grasping or manipulating objects, such as a ball or a mouse. Inability to use the mouse continually for hours makes it difficult for them to use computers and perform even the simple tasks on it.

AI has shown confident results in fields of engineering, surveillance, business, healthcare and everyday applications using its models of Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Neural Networks and their applications including image recognition, large data set analysis, speech recognition, biometric verification, chatbots, natural language generation, sentiment analysis and more. Broadly, AI applications in healthcare include early detection & diagnosis, suggesting treatments, evaluating progress, medical history and predicting outcomes. Hence, increasing efforts are being made to incorporate AI into lesser researched or detailed healthcare sectors like Autism. AI-driven approaches help in developing predictive models by utilizing the hidden correlations and patterns in the data. Currently, the most prevalent use of AI for autistic individuals includes

• 1.

  Robots and Web or Mobile Applications; to teach the children and improve their interaction and communication abilities.

• 2.

  Assistance to therapists and doctors by analysing and assessing a child’s videos and reports.

• 3.

  Mobile Applications to provide mental health support to autistic children as well as to make people conscious of autistic people’s needs.

The responsibility of diagnosis, treatment and progress evaluation of an autistic individual on the therapists and, further care taken by parents or care takers could be reduced with the help of humanoid robots and virtual assistants. Autistic children find it comparatively easier to interact with robots than humans as robots are less complex than humans and also provide them a similar feeling as that of playing with toys.

The chapter is majorly focused on introducing “Mouse-less Cursor Control” technology as a way out

• 1.

  To proceed in the direction of reducing the challenges faced by autistic children and similar people due to communication & motor impairments,

• 2.

  To make aforesaid people more self-reliant and self-sufficient,

• 3.

  To provide them ease in performing work & communication at the office or at home via computer/laptop with the help of AI-based innovations.

Information related to a demo model to imitate and test the “Mouse-less Cursor Control” using facial movements is also discussed. It is a Human Computer Interaction application which uses Python and its libraries including Numpy, OpenCV, PyAuto GUI, Dlib and Imutils to work. Commercial products such as Smyle Mouse, Ishara and more, which are already available in the market working upon the same technology, are also mentioned.