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Google Science Hardware Technology

Google Glass May Have an Afterlife As a Device To Teach Autistic Children (nytimes.com) 56

While Google stopped selling its augmented-reality glasses to customers due to privacy concerns, Google Glass lived on as something to be used by researchers and businesses. The New York Times reports of a new effort from Stanford researchers to use Google Glass to help autistic children understand emotions and engage in more direct ways with those around them. The glasses could also be used to measure changes in behavior, something that has historically been difficult to do. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: When Esaie Prickett sat down in the living room with his mother, father and four older brothers, he was the only one wearing Google Glass. As Esaie, who was 10 at the time and is 12 now, gazed through the computerized glasses, his family made faces -- happy, sad, surprised, angry, bored -- and he tried to identify each emotion. In an instant, the glasses told him whether he was right or wrong, flashing tiny digital icons that only he could see.

Esaie was 6 when he and his family learned he had autism. The technology he was using while sitting in the living room was meant to help him learn how to recognize emotions and make eye contact with those around him. The glasses would verify his choices only if he looked directly at a face. He and his family tested the technology for several weeks as part of a clinical trial run by researchers at Stanford University in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently detailed in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics, the trial fits into a growing effort to build new technologies for children on the autism spectrum, including interactive robots and computerized eyewear.

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Google Glass May Have an Afterlife As a Device To Teach Autistic Children

Comments Filter:
  • by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @11:04PM (#58949442) Journal

    "Are you ok, honey?"
    "Everything's fine."
    Translation: profit!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19, 2019 @01:07AM (#58949744)

    It has *always* been a device for autistic children.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19, 2019 @02:11AM (#58949920)

    Google glass should have been integrated into motorcycle Helmets. Speed, gps navigation, time and helmet cam functionality. A helmet has more room for hardware and batteries . Many Helmets already have a slide down internal tinted glasses/viror in addition to the primary visor.
    It's as if it were custom made for it but.... Nope.

    Short-sighted, there is a real market.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Google glass should have been integrated into motorcycle Helmets. Speed, gps navigation, time and helmet cam functionality. A helmet has more room for hardware and batteries . Many Helmets already have a slide down internal tinted glasses/viror in addition to the primary visor.
      It's as if it were custom made for it but.... Nope.

      Short-sighted, there is a real market.

      Problem is cost. Good helmets already are pretty pricey. Adding in technology only makes it more so. Especially since you need to ensure safety -

  • huge help (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Friday July 19, 2019 @05:45AM (#58950336) Homepage

    as the article explains, this is a very big help for people with autism.
    not only that but it will also help others who work/interact with people autism because they will now be able to better react to the input they get.

    always thought google glasses was a stupid gadget, but this use makes perfect sense.

    • I'm autistic, but I wasn't diagnosed until an adult. Childhood was a horrible time.

      I remember looking at people around me and not seeing another person, but rather, objects of little more consequence than a stick, or rock. It was a very boring and lonely life, and I would grab for any opportunity to feel. Early on, I found excitement in the form of violence. And through violence, I could connect with someone, on a level that I understood. I had my first realizations that others were sentient after severel
  • ...if they had focused on lowering the price and untangling it from Google services dependencies.

    There is a lot of uses waiting in industry for something like this, but not while (a different company than the one using it) has the final say on how it gets used, and how much that will cost.
  • Eye Surgery use...? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jlockard ( 140979 ) on Friday July 19, 2019 @12:26PM (#58952188) Homepage

    I had eye surgery a little less than 2 years ago on my right eye. My left eye has horrible vision, worse than my right. I detached and tore my retina. They lasered it all back together again, which was fantastic. Certainly better than the other alternative which would have been "blind in that eye in less than 2 weeks". So, in the surgery, they poked 2 holes in my eye (maybe 3, but I can only see 2 incision marks), drained all the vitreous gel and fluid from my eye, re-positioned my retina, lasered it back in place, and did more lasering to shore up perceived weak points. Then they filled my eye up with some kind of gas and sealed the incisions.

    During the early healing phase, which lasted 2 weeks, I had to keep my nose pointed at the floor, 24x7. I couldn't see more than 1 cm in front of my eye, and over time, my eye slowly refilled with vitreous fluid. As my eye slowly refilled, my ability to see further and further increased. I could hold my phone almost to my eye and be able to read things, but needed to move my phone a LOT to read a full page of information. I always wondered if something like google glass could have allowed me to view a page of information from my phone (or computer) without all the problems of holding a phone so close to my face, and accidentally selecting something on the screen, because my nose "pressed a button".

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