Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford researchers have created glasses that will help kids with autism decipher social cues and responses more easily. 

• How can educators help design more technology that helps kids with autism thrive in school?

• Read more about how Google Glass helps kids with autism. 

People with autism often struggle with understanding what others are thinking or feeling. Decoding facial expressions can be especially tricky. Is that smile a genuine grin of delight, or a tight grimace of politeness? Does that wrinkled brow mean anger, or just concentration? When you can’t understand the messages on other people’s faces, it’s hard to engage socially. Children with autism are therefore often left out of the group interactions so critical to development.

Now, Stanford researchers say they have a possible new aid: Google Glass. They’ve combined the augmented reality glasses with an app that uses artificial intelligence to identify faces and facial expressions in a child’s field of vision, then shows the child an emoji of the correct expression.

Wall hopes the new technology, which his team has nicknamed "Superpower Glass," could help bridge the gap between diagnosis and beginning treatment.

“We’ve worked very hard to build a mobilized system that can go to the home and generalize to the child’s natural environment, Wall says.

The glasses work with an outward-facing camera, which snaps images and passes them to a phone app via wifi. The app uses machine learning to identify faces and decide on their expression. The glasses then show a green box that lights up on the periphery of the child’s vision to say “you found a face.” An instant later, an emoji with the correct facial expression pops up. The glasses also have a microphone that can give the child verbal information, but Wall and his team are finding that kids prefer the emojis.

Read the full article about kids with autism by Emily Matchar at Smithsonian