Faculty of Computing

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://rda.sliit.lk/handle/123456789/4776

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    Machine Learning-Based Early Detection Of Autism Using Multimodal Conversational Features
    (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2026-06-26) Haturusinghe, R; Gunathilake, B; Abeysundara, S; Senadeera, S; Thelijjagoda, S; Jayalath, T
    Early and reliable screening for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains challenging in low-resource and high-variance conversational settings. This paper presents an end-to-end multimodal screening system that analyzes child-caregiver interaction data from audio recordings, CHAT-format transcripts, and text inputs to estimate ASD likelihood and provide clinician-facing explanations. The system integrates three feature families: pragmatic-conversational, acoustic-prosodic, and syntactic-semantic, supporting component-wise classification and late-fusion strategies with modality-aware weighting. Beyond prediction, the platform provides transcript-level behavioral annotations, global and local feature attributions, and counterfactual what-if analysis. Experiments on cross-validated ASDBank data show multimodal fusion achieving 87.2% accuracy (ROC-AUC 0.92), outperforming unimodal baselines by 2-4%.
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    Designing Culturally Adaptive Emotional Gestures to Enhance Child-Robot Interaction with NAO Robots in ASD Therapy
    (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2025) Manukalpa, C.S; Pulasinghe, K; Rajapakshe, S
    Integrating social robots into human-robot interactions demands advancements in natural language processing, navigation, computer vision, and expressive gestures to foster meaningful interactions. However, a gap remains in designing culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate gestures, particularly in the Sri Lankan context. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition impacting early education, often remains underdiagnosed, exacerbating learning challenges. This study introduces a novel approach utilizing robot-child interactions for ASD screening to minimize such delays. Expressive gestures were developed for the NAO6 humanoid robot to engage Sinhala-speaking children aged 2 to 6 years, including those with ASD, in Sri Lanka. Using the NAOqi Python API and Choregraphe simulator, culturally aligned gestures expressing emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and more were designed and synchronized with voice and LED effects. Pilot studies with typical children demonstrated the significance of linguistic and cultural alignment in enhancing engagement, emotional response, and trust. By addressing cultural nuances and advancing early ASD screening, this framework holds potential for broader applications in education, therapy, and diagnosis, improving human-robot interactions globally.