Influence of Virtual Reality in Autistic Children

We are in a world of new technologies and innovations.Many entrepreneurs are come up with a combination of technologies in their innovations. Virtual Reality(VR) is one among them. Many startups using these technologies in different sectors like healthcare, education for various purpose.Nowadays it is very difficult to train the people in some industries . We can use Virtual Reality for the training purpose, in which we can recreate the environment and train the people in an effective way.

Coming to the healthcare sector, Virtual Reality has a huge impact on this area.Autism Spectrum Disorder is developmental disorder that affects communication and behaviour.They lack cognitive, social and self care skills. Currently a lot of works are happening for the treatment of Autism children using technology. The ratio of 1:59 children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder all around the world, according to the Centre of Autism Disease Control and Prevention Survey. Autism is characterised by severe and pervasive impairments in several important areas of development: reciprocal social interaction and communication as well as behaviour, and imagination. Autism is one of five developmental disorders included under the umbrella of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders. It is a neurodevelopmental disability that can have a significant impact on a student’s communication skills, social interaction and behaviour.In order to be diagnosed with autism, the behavioural symptoms in all the area must be present by age 3. Many autistic children are perfectly normal in appearance, but spend their time engaged in puzzling and disturbing behaviours that are markedly different from those of typically developing children. But some autistic individuals may be remarkably gifted in certain areas, such as, music or mathematics etc.

Virtual Reality Therapy and diagnosis is one of the latest technological movement for solving this problem.Creating real life environments using Virtual Reality for children with autism , can be used as a best training method.For example, In Kerala there is a startup Embright Infotech , their innovative product is a therapy and diagnosis module for the High Functional Autism Children. They were creating such environments and training the autism children. Embright Infotech is a technology driven company with products and services related to Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality Block Chain and IoT. Their therapy modules utilising Virtual Reality that can be used to treat patients with neuro-developmental disorders such as cerebral palsy, autism, schizophrenia and paralysis. The patient will be given therapy sessions under the guidance of a doctor in various recreated real-life scenarios. With repeated use of these therapy sessions, patients will be able to understand and respond positively to the real-world challenges. The ratio of disabled patient accessing proper therapy is very less in number, but Embright Infotech aims to increase the reach of Doctors and the therapy modules to more patients at the same time.This technology will help the Doctors to reach out to remote villages where they can run the therapy sessions from a centralised location. Embright is currently in the process of setting up rehabilitation modules across the Country for people who need autism-related rehabilitation therapy.

The realism of the simulated environment allows the child to learn social,cognitive skills, increasing the probability to transfer them into their everyday lives . Head-mounted displays were typically used in Virtual Reality to increase the feeling of immersion in the Virtual environments.The eye tracking technology in Virtual Reality will give more informative data for the further analysis .The use of Virtual Reality tools for rehabilitation in autism is therefore very promising and may help caretakers and educators to enhance the daily life social behaviours of individuals with autism. Future research on Virtual Reality interventions should investigate how newly acquired skills are transferred to the real world and whether Virtual Reality may impact on other Neurodevelopmental disorders.