Virtual Reality Based System for Training and Monitoring Fire Safety Awareness for Children With Autism

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Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are found with impairments related to brain development that causes deficits in social communication, cognitive skills and sensory, emotional regulations. Virtual Reality allows children with ASD to safely participate in interactive and immersive simulated situation. This proposed study contributes autistic children to improve managing their safety awareness on fire and to identify the environment that is about to cause a fire accident.

As short sessions and unembellished designs are advised in VR for such kinds of disorders, in this the work is attempted to create a model environment in Unity Engine, that could create awareness towards the improvisation of safety on fire by completing the tasks given through stages and to monitor them to analyze their task performances and make the participants to actively immerse into virtual experiences.

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So this system will help the autistic children to learn about fire and its elements. As a result after required sessions they will be to learn how to react and escape from a fire accident.

Introduction

The studies propounds that the autistic brains exhibit pervasive under connectivity that control the individuals potentiality to respond to internal and external stimuli in an adaptable manner. The children with autism who show behavioral concerns are unable to understand the ramifications of their actions. So it is the influence of the parents and caregivers in home and outside to render a safe environment and to educate their children to be safe at all situations. The modifications have to be carried out from where the misbehavior begins.

Some of them can be;

using locks and alarms where appropriate
making electrical outlets and appliances safe
organizing and labelling everyday needs for them
taking precautions for fire safety measures.

Always children has to be supervised when there are active fire or flame in a place like barbeque, lighters, candle, etc.

Currently, the advancements in technology and the gradual deployment of various automated and computerized therapeutic practices can positively impact the traditional method of treating autistic patients. However, making the children with autism into such kind of challenging environment is not an easy task because for most of them have behavioral and cognitive inabilities that limit them from engaging with such novel technologies.

The overall approach in using virtual reality in autism treatment focuses to simulate real-world environments particularly public places like cafes, supermarkets to develop the social and communication behaviors. Other virtual programs also support on teaching safety skill and achieving success in improvements with cognitive and sensory impairments.

Within the literature survey, there are several works done that focuses on fire safety skill development for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) which are:

An educational program was conducted by Mountain Brooks elementary school to assist the children with ASD to make respond to fire drill activations. Using questionnaires as survey from parent, teachers and fire marshals to get detailed information about the children respond to various sound effects. 37 children under age group of 5 to 10 who attends daily school care were involved in the study. They even included many factors that can trigger behavioral issues for the children. They also surveyed about whether they get panic for thunderstorms, lightning, loud noises and flashing lights. The responses were diversified. The results of the study clearly showed children with autism encounter significant obstacles when it comes to fire alarm [5].
Autistic children are reported with despaired symptom profiles. Their parents report that their children were different at the time of birth while some parents claim many months of typical neuro development followed by loss of obtained language, motor and social skills between the child’s first and second birthday [6].
The fire safety training for individuals diagnosed with high level in mental retardation was evaluated to make them exit the situation within 10seconds in their residence upon hearing a smoke detector. Unaware of participant knowledge the research took place in their homes. The results showed 1 participant among 7 met the given criteria followed by the training.
The development of VR system to simulate the abilities of children with ASD. This work is implemented through a technology called human-machine interface, which posses the ability to simulate and work with functions based on rehabilitation. Multiple environments and applications are presented for the interaction to increase the stimulus of the patient.

This article focuses on the implementation of a system in which virtual scenes are used to create the fire environment in order to develop the safety awareness towards fire. The proposal of the work is based on the development of a house in a country-side view where the participant will have to sense that the environment is about to cause a fire accident so they should develop the ability to get out from that situation through any of the available exit within given pre-defined time duration. In addition, their task performances will be evaluated to monitor the involvement and ability to complete the task within given time at each session conducted. Finally after required sessions the participant will able to identify the fire environment and to escape from the situation.

The paper organized as follows. Section 2 presents the framework of the system; While Sect. 3. Shows the study procedures carried out. The module description are explained in Sect. 4. Finally, the discussion and conclusions are presented in Sect. 5 & 6.

System Framework

It is an unfortunate that individuals with ASD are at high risk in a situation involving a fire. Children with ASD have severely injured or even died in fires because they are retreated wrongly to face such difficulties. It is essential to preplan and give them guidance to ensure their safety in the event of fire. Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as an effective tool as a learning aid for children with a variety of disorders including ASD. For creating the alertness and making them to learn the safety skills for fire, this research work will create an awareness to react to the environment where fire accident is about to happen. Their responses towards the task will be evaluated lively to present the results based on their performance and engagement.

Figure 1 shows the overview of the system developed. Participants are selected according to the eligible criteria. Each user is first taught about the virtual environment and how to handle the devices. An overview is given to them about fire and the safety awareness. A brief explanation is taught to them as what they will experience inside the virtual environment. Their caretakers will be their side for the user comfort ability until the session gets completed. In fixed time interval their blood pressure is checked to make sure that they are stable and can manage the task without experiencing difficulty. The assigned tasks at each stages are asked to perform. Finally, based on the evaluation related to task engagement and performance the assessment is generated individually at each session.

The results shown are for the knowledge of the caretakers / person who is guiding them through the tasks. Finally, no matter what the results they attained the reinforcement given is ‘positive’ to encourage them for future better performance.

Study Procedure

Eligibility Criteria Selection, the participants should be diagnosed with milder symptoms of autistic disorder, may have social challenges and unusual behaviors and interests & do not have problems with language or intellectual disability under the age group 5 to 14years. They should have ability to understand the language English or Tamil. Participants are not selected while they are suffering under conditions of hyperactivity, blindness, extreme level of anxiety disorders and communication challenges. Ages >18 years are not considered to the designed environment and the outcome predictions are basically for children of age group less than 18.

Task evaluation method, each participant will be going through all the tasks possibly. Based on the time duration they need for completion/incompletion of the task depends with each individual because this is a live task done with the users randomly diagnosed with ASD. For each session the bar chart is drawn based on their performance at each stages. The evaluation of task engagement will show whether they are able to identify the fire accident that is about to happen and the ability to move out from that environment based on the completion of the tasks given at each stage. The bar graph determines the magnitude of how well they adapted and understood the environment at each session.

Fixation duration classification for evaluation, the primary outcome is based on two factors. All the participants are made to experience the environment which has the pre-fixed duration time of (total: 1min 30 sec) and it is spilt into fixed flexible categories for each of the stages to analyze; 1) the task performance achieved by the children based on the classification towards each of the stages in the virtual environment. 2) the engagement towards to the tasks is measured in ordinals as poor, satisfactory and good based on fixed time duration in the environment. 3) according to the pre-fixed time durations each of the tasks in stages have to be performed by the participants.

Informed consent procedure, the informed consent form is given to the Parent/Legally acceptable representative (LAR) since the children are below 18years of age group. The details of the study will be clearly mentioned in bilingual languages (English, Tamil). After assuring the full consent with their voluntary participation of the Parent/ LAR, they are allowed to proceed for the contribution of this research study.

Experimental Design

This section explains about the design of the conducted experiment. It is composed of two modules;

a) the tasks given at each stage to perform and the design steps of 3d model environment in Unity
b) to develop the application for evaluating the results at each sessions are described.

Illustrates about the tasks given with pre-fixed duration in the virtual environment. Each stage has to be completed or attended to pass to the next stage. The expected outcome at each stage has to be attained for the successful attainment of the session.

Interface Unity 3D, is used for the designing of virtual environment. It is a cross–platform gaming engine that can support three-dimensional, two-dimensional, virtual reality and augmented reality simulations developed by Unity Technologies. This platform is used to develop a room that is about to cause a fire accident. In the process of creating the environment the steps are followed:

for the design of 3D model the avatars, room interior furniture, prefabs and their properties are downloaded from the assets store.
for each model unique features are given for better interaction such as animations, audio, colors, textures, and
the inputs are programmed for controls.

This environmental setup in Unity aims to create a fire safety awareness skill in children, by giving the user the virtual country-side view house for learning to escape the situation in the event of fire.

Developing the application for evaluating results, the application is developed via local host using XAMMP server environment. PHP is used as the programming language. The application’s framework is built for entering manually the personal details and the evaluation analysis of users in 3d environment. It classifies the result for all three stages by following the principle of pre-fixed time duration values. Finally, after entering all the monitored values the result is generated via bar graph for each of the individuals at each sessions.

Discussion

The study is being held at their own place there are no chances of safety risks. The risks that are involved in engaging with VR environment will be minimum and it is safe. But at serious situations actions can be taken immediately. When it is necessary even the task can be suspended at once. The data are being entered dynamically after the participation of each individual user and stored in databases for future retrieval and analysis.

After monitoring the user in the VR environment the information are entered parallel for the result evaluation. By the response towards to the tasks the scoring values will alter. Accordingly the result will show the improvisation or either the repetition/suspension of the task will be evaluated based on the task performance and engagement. No statistical measures have been applied to derive the results. The actual results are based upon the fixed duration given to complete the tasks at each stages and the estimation of the fixed duration values are purely theoretical based.

Conclusion

This study presents the implementation and method of evaluation which will enable innovative Virtual Reality (VR)-based therapy approach for children to create an awareness towards the safety skill of fire for the autism spectrum deficit children. This system shows great potential to deliver and improve the responsiveness after the required sessions, to a fire accident which is about to happen. Results from each of individual assessments will show the improvisation of the children to develop their capability towards the awareness to fire. Their task performance (e.g., Qualitative improvement of performances) along with voluntary engagement (e.g. Adaption to the virtual environment) to foster effective engagement towards the safety skills among the participants with ASD. VR is considered to be a safe environment because of the reason there is the possibility to control and gradually increase task complexity based on their own interest.

After required amount of sessions they should be able to learn and understand about the safety awareness towards fire and their adaptive response towards fire can also be improvised. Results from each of individual assessments will show the improvisation of the children to develop their capability towards the awareness to fire.This is an initial work and the results of this study may inform future work to develop an integrated Virtual environment with simulation in the designing to teach the various safety skills for ASD children.

References

Minshew, N.J., & Williams, D.L. “The new neurobiology of autism: Cortex connectivity and neural organization. Archives of Neurology, 64, 945-950 (2007).
https://www.autism-society.org/living-with-autism/how-the-autism-society-can-help/safe-and-sound/safety-in-the-home/ .
Tentori, M., Escobedo, L., Balderas, G.: A smart environment for children with autism. IEEE Pervasive Comput. 14(2), 42–50 (2015).
J. Michelle Wang and EvdokiaAnagnostou, 'Virtual Reality as Treatment Tool for Children with Autism,' - DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4788-7_130 (2014).
David A. Cohen,“Children with Autism and Fire Drills and Fire Alarms,” (2012).