041 - Understand autistic children through VR

Research VR Podcast - The Science & Design of Virtual Reality

Kirill Pokutnyy and Sergei Tereshchenko from Sensorama Lab

This week on ResearchVR we talk about an innovative use of VR as a therapeutical tool to work with autistic children. Check out our discussion with Kirill Pokutnyy and Sergei Tereshchenko from Sensorama Lab.

Kirill Pokutnyy and Sergei Tereshchenko started Sensorama Lab 7 years ago. The mission is to facilitate the exchange between experts from different fields - art, gaming, business, and research - who want to work with new interactive mediums, such as AR and VR.

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One of the main challenges connected to autistic children is how to communicate with them. Often they just stay in their own world, ignoring everything around them. So how do you reach out to them? How do you enter their world? Well, now you can, using the endless possibilities of creation in VR.

Among many interesting projects at Sensorama Lab, one majorly stands out - using apps like Tilt Brush as a therapy for autistic children. The idea is relatively simple - let them recreate their own world using creation in VR tools. This way others have a chance to get an inside into this child's world and understand it.

Besides a general feeling that it works, Sensorama Lab aims to understand also HOW it works. During the events they organize, they survey what is changing: how do children react to suggestions? how do they react to instructions? And therefore directly measuring how does the communication with an autistic child improve.

Links

• Sensoramalab.com
• Sensorama Facebook