Calma

Children Diagnosed on the autistic spectrum are likely to experience sensory process disorder, expressed by sensory overload, or indifference to the environment. One of the common therapeutic concepts for these children combines training that enables children to move between a quiet environment located in a "white room" and a noisy environment full of stimuli. This approach is not flexible in terms of regulating the level of stimuli in the noisy environment and is not very adaptable to the patients needs. As a result, the training options available to therapists are limited and are resource dependent. The mamad Dkalim School staff was exploring for a creative solution for school treatment, including evolving technological means that will help patients to cope their everyday reality and help them to lead a more normal life. The main objectives are:

• Reducing sensory distress among patients
• Increasing patients' awareness of sensory needs
• Create a control interface that allows the therapist to choose opportunities and control the environment
• Ability for real-time monitoring
• Building a sensory (virtual) world actively and according to the patients' needs
• (mainly a combination of visual and auditory stimuli)

Therapists:

• Education professionals in the field of occupational therapy, music therapy, special education average age between 29 and 35
• Basic technological literacy - control of various devices: smartphone, computer, tablet
• Little to none familiarity with virtual reality technology
• Highly motivated to learn new methods of treatment to help the school children

Patients:

• Children diagnosed on the autistic spectrum at the age between 8 - 13
• medium to high sympathy for technological accessories like smartphones, tablets and more
• The children have not previously experienced virtual reality therapy, but according to the school experiment, there seems to be a great therapeutic potential for using virtual reality as an assistive technology

• The population is composed of a wide spectrum with different disabilities. Children on the autistic spectrum have many difficulties, such as difficulties in verbal / nonverbal communication, difficulties in creating personal / social relationships and cognitive impairments in their ability to understand the connections to the events in the world around them. The disabilities we are going to focus on are the difficulties in absorbing and deciphering sensory stimuli and difficulties in sensory balance. This is expressed in anxiety, problems of closeness and communication, and sometimes also in violent behavior
• Sensory processing is different from child to child, can be divided into a bar with two central ends - at one end, overflow and overload and at the other end, sub-emotion. The amount of screening and sensory processing varies from child to child
• The auditory channel is more difficult in the children, so it is best to focus on the visual channel that affects children more and their reactions
• Children need to feel secure. It is important that the conduct with children is based on trust and self-motivation
• There is a need to emphasize the problem of the "crossings" - how to soften the entrance and exit from the virtual world

As a result of our research and development we created the Calma treatment system. Consisting of two components that enable a flexible, cost efficient and in real-time controllable treatment for children on the autistic spectrum.

Web interface

A Web UI allowing to regulate the intensity of audio and visual stimuli according to the patients reactions, in real-time. Furthermore systems enables customized therapy sessions, tailored to the patients needs. at the end of a session, the system saves the current current state for continuing therapies. An Intuitive and easy web UI that enables a simple way to interact with a running session.

Virtual World

Using virtual reality headset for an immersive underwater scenery. initially stimuli are kept low and giving the option to gradually being increased during the sessions. the therapist can overview the session in real time, with a mirroring service on an external tablet.