The video game " Pico's Adventure" aims to facilitate social interaction for children with autism through a series of games and collaborative experiences. The first experimental studies have shown that it is effective as a complement to conventional therapies. It is a joint project by the Cognitive Media Technologies research group and the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital (Barcelona).

Narcís Parés, co-ordinator of the Cognitive Media Technologies research group of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) at UPF, and the Specialist Unit for Developmental Disorders at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, have created " Pico's Adventure". The game incorporates technology that is based on using the device Kinect, which is available for Windows platforms.

An alien befriends the children and invites them to share a lot of experiences

The video game facilitates social interaction by autistic children by means of a series of games and collaborative experiences. In the environment in which the game is set, a friendly alien has landed on Earth because of a problem with his spaceship. This being from space accompanies children on a series of adventures that have been designed to foster specific behaviour such as asking for help, taking turns and giving instructions to other children.

Initial experimental studies with children diagnosed with autism have shown the efficacy of this game in fostering social interaction among children, which suggests that it may become an important complement to existing conventional therapies for this condition.

The videogame has been developed as part of the European project " Motion-based adaptive playful learning experiences for children with motor and Intellectual Disabilities (M4All)" - a research project that is part of the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme.

The video game is available in open access at:

http://m4all.widetesting.info/